Newbie shooting question

[Gwhite]

The shots that cost you the most points are not there due to subtle errors in trigger position. Stop wasting time & energy fiddling with the pistol adjustments & work on your technique. When you can keep them all inside the 9 ring, target after target, THEN you can try refining your hardware setup. By that time, you will be able to tell if the changes you make are doing anything useful.

Also, don't keep messing with your sights until you can call your shots accurately. If all your shots are at 3:00 in the 9 ring and you CALLED them there, your sights don't need adjusting, your technique does.

[nmondal]

The shots that cost you the most points are not there due to subtle errors in trigger position. Stop wasting time & energy fiddling with the pistol adjustments & work on your technique. When you can keep them all inside the 9 ring, target after target, THEN you can try refining your hardware setup. By that time, you will be able to tell if the changes you make are doing anything useful.

Also, don't keep messing with your sights until you can call your shots accurately. If all your shots are at 3:00 in the 9 ring and you CALLED them there, your sights don't need adjusting, your technique does.

Understood Gwhite, but I am still having grip issues. My hand is small. Not ultra small but small.
And hence the trigger adjustment to get more finger there.

[Gwhite]

A good trigger finger position is nice, but it's not that fussy at the level you are at. From the groups you've posted, it's plenty good enough for now.

My wife has very small hands, and when she shot in college, women shooters of any size were rare. The team didn't have any pistols with small grips, much less ones where you could adjust the trigger position. She helped set a National Collegiate Team Record shooting .22 by dragging the tip of her finger on the right side of the trigger. It undoubtedly pushed her shots to the left, but she was consistent enough she could take that out with a sight adjustment. She now shoots a bit better with a pistol that fits her, but learning how to shoot well with a pistol that didn't fit exactly right has served her just fine.

One of the problems is that there's a ton of information about the "right" way to shoot, with a long list of little details to worry about . What is missing is any sort of concrete information about just how critical (or not) a lot of the finer points are. Beginners get obsessed with having their grip just right, their trigger just right, the right shoes, etc. and spend WAY too much time fussing with things that are minor compared to learning proper trigger control and sight alignment.

I've seen students spend half their prep time trying to get their natural point of aim (NPOA) JUST right. For a slow fire event, it's just not that critical. I've done tests where I have intentionally set up my position for air pistol well off from my normal point of aim. It feels weird, but if I concentrated on the fundamentals, the effect on my groups was in the noise. We had a student who did a project for an engineering class using an electronic trainer to try and measure the effect of NPOA on stability and group size. With a limited amount of time and only one test subject (himself), he could barely tell the difference between his regular NPOA (roughly 45 degrees), and 0 or 90 degrees.

Getting your trigger just right isn't going to magically shrink your groups. Evaluate what is opening up your groups the most, and work on fixing that. Save the fine tuning for later when you are shooting well enough to evaluate the effects of small changes in a meaningful way.

[eugene]

What Gwhite says.

Yesterday I went to the range in "wrong" shoes and couldn't break a 90 in five series straight. Of course I was wondering if the shoes have anything to do with that. Towards the last one however I got tired dwelling on it and just concentrated on sight picture and trigger release and voila, it was a 95.

[KDZ]

How much of your wobble ("arc of movement", etc) is natural (talent), and how much can be trained? I think the textbook answer is after 1000's of hours of practice it will be minimized but obviously not go away. However watching Olympic shooter's muzzles there is very little movement once they are in the aiming area.

After getting pretty good at keeping sights aligned through shot release, is wobble trainable and if so how?

[nmondal]

This is today.

[nmondal]

My wife has very small hands, and when she shot in college, women shooters of any size were rare. The team didn't have any pistols with small grips, much less ones where you could adjust the trigger position. She helped set a National Collegiate Team Record shooting .22 by dragging the tip of her finger on the right side of the trigger. It undoubtedly pushed her shots to the left, but she was consistent enough she could take that out with a sight adjustment. She now shoots a bit better with a pistol that fits her, but learning how to shoot well with a pistol that didn't fit exactly right has served her just fine.

This is my hand drawing - drawn to order Rink Grips.
You still think this is not a problem? Even with an Small size grip.. I am having trouble pressing triggers consistently.

[nmondal]

just concentrated on sight picture and trigger release and voila, it was a 95.

That is precisely what is my problem. Because of grip and trigger - release is not happening properly.
Some days it just happens. I mean grouping happened even today - but I adjusted the trigger facing my index finger to the right.

[Gwhite]

How much of your wobble ("arc of movement", etc) is natural (talent), and how much can be trained? I think the textbook answer is after 1000's of hours of practice it will be minimized but obviously not go away. However watching Olympic shooter's muzzles there is very little movement once they are in the aiming area.

After getting pretty good at keeping sights aligned through shot release, is wobble trainable and if so how?

I'm not sure how far you can go, but having switched recently to shooting left handed, it does improve with training. A lot of that may just be getting the muscles on my left side built up a bit, but I think some of it is eye hand coordination to keep the movements smaller.

The thing that I've noticed is that I don't wobble uniformly. Side to side is pretty consistent, but up & down tends to include big lurches upward. If the pistol drops down too much, I haven't developed the fine control to bring it back up smoothly. I tend to correct abruptly, which overshoots above the black. If the shot breaks at the wrong time, I get a shot in the white at 12:00. Sometimes lately, I seem to be able to overcome that tendency to lurch upward, but I think it's going to be a while before I can eliminate that.

I've actually been surprised at how well I can shoot lefty after about a month of sporadic training. It's certainly not great, but it isn't nearly as bad as I feared. I think I'm averaging in the low 80's in air pistol now, having started in the mid-70's. All the fundamentals are the same, it's just a matter of getting my left side to execute my shot process correctly.

I am strongly right eye dominant, and getting grips from Rink with a 7 degree offset definitely helps. I have a left handed grip on a Tau-7, and I was constantly fighting to keep the pistol pointed so my eye lined up with the sights.

[KDZ]

Thanks Gwhite

I noticed something similar. Some days groups show more vertical stringing, others R-L - though not sure why.

I've tried isolating the source of wobble. Dry firing seated at my computer (take that CNN!) I can see how much is due to stance vs arm and try to train arm stability.

One funny experiment is dry firing at the ceiling laying on the floor - removing body stance as well as efforts to stabilize gravity pulling the gun down. Shooting this way significantly reduced wobble, so my current theory is the counter-acting muscle movements (proprioception, etc) to hold the gun still against gravity is a big contributor.

[Gwhite]

This is my hand drawing - drawn to order Rink Grips.
You still think this is not a problem? Even with an Small size grip.. I am having trouble pressing triggers consistently.

You do have small hands, but your trigger finger is on the long side compared to the rest of the hand, which should help.

What part of your finger are you putting on the trigger? The most sensitive part is the pad at the tip, about where the whorls of your fingerprint are centered. That's what you want to use for precision shooting. You can find instructions for shooting heavy combat triggers that say you should use the groove of the first joint, which will really screw things up.

IDEALLY, you want the pressure to be straight back, inline with the bore when the shot breaks. Not at the beginning, not at the end.

One problem with fancy "orthomanic" grips is that it's hard to shift your hand around to reach the trigger if things aren't right. With a lot of older pistols without adjustable triggers, that was your only option. You had to compromise between a good grip & a good trigger position. Generally a good grasp on the pistol is more important.

Some people will mess up their trigger reach by rotating their hands around too far behind the grip. Ideally, you want the bore to line up roughly with your arm, with no twist right or left in your wrist. If you just relax your hand an raise it up, that's the position it should be in when holding the pistol. THEN worry about the trigger position.

If the reach to the trigger isn't perfect, it's not the end of the world. As long as your trigger squeeze is consistent, any deflection can be tuned out with a sight adjustment. I see NO evidence in your groups of an excessive horizontal spread that couldn't just as easily be due to anticipation & grip issues.

Again, if you are REALLY good at calling your shots, and your trigger is too far forward, you should see the pistol consistently deviate a little to the left a tiny bit as you apply pressure (I assume you are right handed). You get exactly the same effect if you tighten up your finger tips (and generally with a much larger deflection), so it's hard to be sure what is going on. I would estimate at least 95% of the shooters that pull their shots left are having grip issues more than trigger position problems.

[emre-nur]

You do have small hands, but your trigger finger is on the long side compared to the rest of the hand, which should help.

What part of your finger are you putting on the trigger? The most sensitive part is the pad at the tip, about where the whorls of your fingerprint are centered. That's what you want to use for precision shooting. You can find instructions for shooting heavy combat triggers that say you should use the groove of the first joint, which will really screw things up.

IDEALLY, you want the pressure to be straight back, inline with the bore when the shot breaks. Not at the beginning, not at the end.

One problem with fancy "orthomanic" grips is that it's hard to shift your hand around to reach the trigger if things aren't right. With a lot of older pistols without adjustable triggers, that was your only option. You had to compromise between a good grip & a good trigger position. Generally a good grasp on the pistol is more important.

Some people will mess up their trigger reach by rotating their hands around too far behind the grip. Ideally, you want the bore to line up roughly with your arm, with no twist right or left in your wrist. If you just relax your hand an raise it up, that's the position it should be in when holding the pistol. THEN worry about the trigger position.

If the reach to the trigger isn't perfect, it's not the end of the world. As long as your trigger squeeze is consistent, any deflection can be tuned out with a sight adjustment. I see NO evidence in your groups of an excessive horizontal spread that couldn't just as easily be due to anticipation & grip issues.

Again, if you are REALLY good at calling your shots, and your trigger is too far forward, you should see the pistol consistently deviate a little to the left a tiny bit as you apply pressure (I assume you are right handed). You get exactly the same effect if you tighten up your finger tips (and generally with a much larger deflection), so it's hard to be sure what is going on. I would estimate at least 95% of the shooters that pull their shots left are having grip issues more than trigger position problems.

My hands are more or less the same size and the german seller sent me middle size grip.
I use the tip of my finger, the most sensitive part and I have no problem in reaching the trigger of LP500, actually I pushed the trigger a bit forward. I really like the feeling that the grip fills may hand.

My problem with the grip is that I need more support in the in the palm shelf. I will try to address this with a leather strap (William's advice) to replace the current make-shift solution with the yellow paper tape.

[Gwhite]

Your trigger finger position looks fine, and it appears you have room to adjust it fore & aft a bit. Build up your palm shelf & get busy working on your trigger control & sight alignment.

[nmondal]

This is today at range.



Started with clear 10.
Then, got mental block literally, frozen finger for 20 mins.
Then the next shot again was 10.
Then got inspired and shot some bad shot.
Then got more inspired and shot all 10s.
I think last 10 shots I shot are 10 X 8 .
As time progresses so does my grip and score. Any... clue on that?

[Gwhite]

Are you stretching before you shoot?

[nmondal]

Are you stretching before you shoot?

No, definitely not.
Should I? I mean I am wondering how stretching will allow me to get a great first grip?
After 30 mins or so I have a terrific grip on the Pistol!
And then it stays for the rest of the day - no matter even if I pick it up after 3, 4, 5 hours.

And.. what would be these stretching?
===
Thanks GWhite again for the help!

[Gwhite]

There are various recommended stretches, but admittedly mostly for the upper body, arms & shoulders. Do a search on "stretches". I'm not aware of any specifically for grip, but maybe somebody else knows of ones. Here's one resource:

https://www.olympicpistol.com/pistol-sh ... ederation/

Do you just pick up the pistol and start shooting for groups? That's not the way it's done in competition. Most top level shooters will hold & dry fire for a while before starting sighters. That should go a good ways towards getting your grip tuned up. The shots that count don't start until they've spent a good bit of time getting settled.

Contrary to what the name suggests, "sighters" are generally not used to adjust the sights. Once you have adequately mastered the fundamentals, you should find that your sights are just fine unless the pistol got whacked in travel. I've gone for months without ever touching my sights. The most I might adjust is 1 click. The sighter shots are used to reacquaint yourself with the details of your trigger feel, and any (hopefully minor) differences in the range setup & lighting. Lighting can affect your sights a bit, but at big matches with internally illuminated electronic targets, that's pretty well standardized. If you shoot at different clubs on paper targets, things will change a bit more, but not dramatically.

If you find that you are constantly making sight adjustments of more than a click or two, there is something wrong. As I've said many times, if you can't call your shots, sight adjustments are often counterproductive.

[nmondal]

There are various recommended stretches, but admittedly mostly for the upper body, arms & shoulders. Do a search on "stretches". I'm not aware of any specifically for grip, but maybe somebody else knows of ones. Here's one resource:

https://www.olympicpistol.com/pistol-sh ... ederation/

Do you just pick up the pistol and start shooting for groups? That's not the way it's done in competition. Most top level shooters will hold & dry fire for a while before starting sighters. That should go a good ways towards getting your grip tuned up. The shots that count don't start until they've spent a good bit of time getting settled.

In our state level competition (India, Telangana) - they give 10 mins of prep time and then 45 mins to shoot 40 shots.
I do not find it adequate. If it would be even 20 mins of prep time...

[nmondal]

This is today.
Very less 10s.



May be my eye sight?

[william]

This is today.
Very less 10s.



May be my eye sight?

Do you have a coach? If not, find one - somebody who can observe your training, shooting, and draw logical conclusions from what he sees. It really seems like you're flailing around with no sense of direction.