I was just wondering if anyone had tips on how to quickly get sight on target from the compressed ready position?
And before anyone says it - I know practice practice practice!
I guess more specifically, are there tips on specific practice techniques for this?
Terminology differ so I’m assuming by ‘compressed ready position’, you mean when the gun is back close to your body, elbows bent, muzzle parallel to the ground, and pointed at the target?
If so and assuming you shoot isosceles, the key is to push straight out toward the target...kinda like a jab (we actually call it 'punching out'). Many shooters will incorrectly arc the same motion from low to high or high to low....kinda like casting in fishing.
As you push/punch straight out toward the target you’re trigger finger should be taking the slack out of the trigger and you should simultaneously be looking for the front sight. The sights should come up to your eyes vs. dipping your head down to your sights. Depending on how close you are, you could take the shot only referencing your front sight. If you’re further away, you’d pick up your front sight and reference with your rear sight as well.
Generally for new shooters, we fire one round at a time, starting slow and increasing speed only as they become more proficient. The key is not speeding up too soon. The speed comes after you get used to the motion of extending out, slack out, finding your front sight, firing, finding your sights again after the shot & taking the slack out of the trigger (pretending to prepare for a second shot), and coming back to what I call, “Ready Gun” (finger out of the trigger and compressed as you describe). This could take 100s and 100s of reps to get what we call muscle memory. After you do it a few hundred times, try starting at ready gun, close your eyes and without firing open your eyes when you're fully extended. Your sights should be on or very close to the target. Your shoulders and lower back will be screaming when you first start.
A good drill is the ‘dot’ drill. Either find a target with @3” dots or draw your own, go out to 5-7yds and put an entire mag, coming back to ready gun after each shot, one shot at a time. There is no time limit but the goal is to put the entire mag in that dot without any flyers. Once you can regularly repeat this drill without any misses, you can speed it up or move back a few feet.
When you get good at shooting one dot, try transitioning between two dots (eyes, muzzle, sights in that order). As you transition, your trigger finger should be resetting and getting the slack out of the trigger and your eyes should be looking for the target independently. A frequent mistake is to hold the trigger to the rear until you find your target to reset the trigger….meaning as you line up the sights you release/reset the trigger and prepare to fire again. That’s OK if you’re just target shooting, but you’ll find it’s much slower compared to working the trigger and finding your sights independently.
Regardless of whether you’re shooting one target or many, ideally, by the time you recover from recoil of the first shot, your trigger finger should have reset and taken the slack out during the recoil. That way all you’re doing is looking for that sight to fire again.
This is getting beyond your question, but I teach new shooters with the weapon completely aimed in to start. The second phase is teaching from ready gun, and finally from the holster, to ready gun, and out to the target. Essentially I’m teaching back to the holster vs. starting them there. Generally it’s too many steps to remember to start from the holster.
Hope this helps.
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