Fortunately, the group that my husband and I shoot with shoots a lot. He's been shooting with them for years and they were sweet to help this chick out with the basics.
Tuesday night is IDPA practice night. We are usually at an indoor range, but tonight we ventured outside and braved the mosquitoes. I am getting better with my form, although I lean forward too much. (I guess it is a girl thing to stick her butt out.) However, I am still anticipating recoil. Does anyone have any suggestions to help?
Tonight's advice included:
- Keep left arm locked
- Squeeze, don't jerk the trigger
- The left hand should do most of the "holding" work
- Stage the trigger
- And, of course, more practice!
The stage below included five targets, two rounds each with two dummy rounds in the magazine for jam-clearing practice.
I would say, keep both arms locked, not just the strong hand arm. Also, leaning forward to the target seems to be normative, with knees bent, much as you were doing. But I have perhaps less experience than you, even, and have never had any sort of formal lessons, though I have talked and read and discussed gun form. Others may disagree with my advice.
Posted by: Jon | July 09, 2008 at 12:18 AM
MHOs...
Leaning forward at the waist is not necessarily a bad thing, as it can help you control recoil ("leaning on the gun").
It's also OK to have a tight grip with your shooting hand, as long as it's not so tight that you're causing muscle tremor. In a stressful/defensive situation you would most likely have a reflexive death-grip on the gun.
Staging the trigger can help with shooting groups but may be another one of those things that you won't be able to do well under stress, and could cause unintentional discharges (as a violation of Rule 3, depending on circumstances).
The "ball-and-dummy drill" (loading some snap caps into the mag) is a good way to identify the anticipation issue as you've noted; doing lots of safe dry-fire (still following the 4-5 basic safety rules) is one way to work on it... or doing small-caliber, low-recoil practice such as with the .22LR AA kit you mentioned.
Frankly, judging from the video it looks like your recoil anticipation is not that bad!
Posted by: Gunmetal | July 09, 2008 at 01:01 AM
Think about nothing except for the front sight, make that your entire world the front sight, You Know you can control the gun.
Posted by: The Duck | July 09, 2008 at 07:25 AM
The lean is good! Don't lose the lean!
Most women have a tendency to lean back to counter the weight of the gun at the end of their arms which makes recoil control near impossible. Your gun isn't travelling to far under recoil, locking your right arm will definitely bring that under control. Can't see you r feet, or tell quite how your legs are spread, but it looks about right: legs about shoulder width, knees bent and toes towards target with your weight on the balls of your feet. Almost as if your muzzle was against a wall and you were leaning on it. Remember though, in action pistol sports and self defense; if your stance is perfect, you're not moving fast enough. Practice obtaining a perfect stance, but be comfortable shooting from a less than ideal position.
You're doing a nice job of "turreting", moving the whole upper body shooting platform as one.
You are responding to the dummy rounds quickly but don't forget to smack the magazine before clearing, in real life that's probably what caused the jam. Tap-Rack-Bang!
Shoot well and be safe,
Joe
Posted by: Joe Allen | July 09, 2008 at 02:30 PM
Forgot to mention; if you watch the shots with snap caps you'll see that you're "pushing" a bit in anticipation of recoil.
A little dry fire practice (keep a penny balanced on the front sight) will make that go right away!
Joe
Posted by: Joe Allen | July 09, 2008 at 02:32 PM
Thanks for posting this! The more women shooting, the better!
Posted by: robert | July 09, 2008 at 04:57 PM