New Shooter- low POI

[gargoyle999]

Hi- I'm brand new to shooting and have a question. I have a new M&P Shield 9mm I just picked up Monday. Went to the range last two days and at 10 feet my shots are ending up 2-3 inches low and slightly left. I suspect I'm not doing something right, maybe with the trigger pull? I've had one private lesson so far but was using my M&P22, I'm doing 'ok' with that one. I have another lesson next month but before then wanted to see if there was any advise for a new shooter to correct low impact. My POI is fairly consistent when I'm really focusing, it's just low and a bit left. Thanks!

[farmerj]

http://pistol-training.com/archives/292

Check out the target there.

Without seeing you shoot. It's likely you are anticipating recoil and pushing the gun as you fire.

[plink]

If you're anticipating the shot, you might be pushing at the gun at the last second. The gun wants to recoil, so you naturally push to keep it down. Don't. Practice your trigger pull with the gun empty. I don't know how tolerant the shield is to dry firing, so some snap caps might be a good investment. (fake bullets that don't go bang) Maintain your POA all the way through the trigger pull.

You can try twisting the gun in your hand to the right to get rid of the leftish shot. That might play games with your grip, but it works for some.

If that all checks out, then adjust your sights. When adjusting, front sight charges towards bullet holes. Rear sight runs away.

[ttousi]

Here's one to print

Corr RH.doc

(108 KB) Downloaded 183 times

Proper grip and trigger finger placement is also a factor.........too little finger will push the muzzle to the left

[onebohemian]

Shoot off of a bag so that you eliminate as best you can your anticipatory flinch. If still low, it might be that the gun is set to shoot with the front sight blocking out the target instead of below the target like you may be used to shooting your .22. I don't know how the shield is set from factory. I have one but don't recall what the sight picture was the last time I had it out.

[jshuberg]

Low and left is a very common error. It can be caused by a couple of different things. Even a qualified instructor won't necessarily see what the error is in real time. What you need to do is to change a few specific things, and see how it effects your POI. You could be either experiencing an error in trigger squeeze, or an error in grip.

You could be doing what's known as "milking the grip". It's exactly what is sounds like, a constant increase in your grip pressure that begins as you squeeze the trigger. You could also be anticipating recoil, meaning that you are increasing your grip strength and dipping the muzzle at the moment you think the shot will break. The difference is that when milking the grip, you increase pressure continuously throughout the trigger squeeze, and when anticipating you increase pressure when you get to the point you believe the gun will fire. Both of these errors are amplified by an improper or asymmetric grip.

You also could be pushing the trigger laterally and down with your finger during the squeeze. This could be caused by either an improper placement of your finger on the trigger, not pressing the trigger perfectly rearward, or both. Trigger squeeze is the most difficult fundamental to master, since it should be the only change in pressure applied to the weapon during the firing sequence.

Here are some dry-fire techniques to work on that will save you range and ammo costs, and will help out immensely in improving your shooting technique. Make sure to safety check your weapon, and remove all ammo from the room when dry firing.

The first thing I'd recommend is to put the gun in your hand and grip it the way you normally do and align your sights. Then close your eyes, and increase your grip on the gun to just before the point where you feel your muscles shake. Then open your eyes and look at your sight alignment. The front sight should still be aligned in the notch of the rear. Then close your eyes, loosen your grip to where you are just lightly holding it, but not squeezing your hands. Then open your eyes and look at your sight alignment. The front sight should still be aligned in the notch of the rear. Then close your eyes, and increase your grip on the gun back to your normal grip pressure. Then open your eyes and look at your sight alignment. The front sight should still be aligned in the notch of the rear.

If at any point your front sight drifted out of alignment with the rear sight when your eyes were closed and you changed grip pressure, your grip pressure is asymmetrical. While a shooter can minimize sympathetic muscle motion in the hands during trigger squeeze, it can't be completely eliminated. Especially when you get into rapid fire training. Having an asymmetric grip will result in sympathetic muscle motion imparting a motion onto the frame of the pistol. By adjusting your hand placement, and location and pressure and angle of pressure on the grip, you should be able to keep the front sight perfectly aligned in the notch of the rear throughout a wide range of grip strengths. What this training exercise does is inoculate your grip against sympathetic muscle motions imparting a motion on the frame. You still want to work on minimizing sympathetic muscle motions to the smallest amount possible, but having a perfectly symmetrical grip is the foundation of you shooting platform.

Keep in mind that your hands are contacting the pistol differently. With a proper thumbs forward grip, your wrists are canted at different angles. What you want to do apply symmetrical pressure on the gun, but because each hand is holding the gun differently, a symmetric pressure won't feel symmetric to you. The point is that it doesn't matter how it feels to you, what's important is how that pressure is translated to the gun. Typically, this will feel to the shooter that their support hand is gripping the gun tighter than the weapon hand. Also raising the support elbow slightly higher (1-2") will direct your grip strength in a more uniform distribution around the circumference of the grip. It may feel wrong or weird, but if your grip keeps the front sight perfectly aligned in the rear in the exercise above, the gun is telling you that the pressure applied by your hands is perfectly balanced on the grip.

Once your grip is working for you, you can then move on to trigger squeeze. Start with a visualization. Imagine that there's a string that runs from the back of the trigger, through the frame and your hands, and goes into a little hole on the tip of your nose. As you begin your trigger squeeze, imagine that what's happening is that a little winch inside your nose is smoothly and evenly pulling the trigger rearward. Imagine that your not actually pressing the trigger with your finger, but that your finger is merely riding the trigger back in one continuous rearward motion. Don't just act like this is happening, but actually imagine it, see the string in your minds eye. The more you're able to convince yourself of the visualization, the more effective it will be. Do this slowly, several seconds from the time you start until the hammer/striker falls. Once you've got the visualization working, play around with placing your finger on the trigger in different locations and positions. Figure out which location feels smoother and more natural when riding the trigger rearward. As you do this, watch your front sight, it shouldn't move or wiggle at all all the way up to and past the point where the hammer/striker falls. When the front sight doesn't move or twitch at all, that is the evidence of a perfectly rearward trigger press - provided you also have a decent grip as well, which is why you want to work on that first.

After this, you can try speeding up your trigger squeeze, as well as loosening your grip to just barely holding the gun. A perfectly rearward trigger squeeze wont disturb the sights, even with a very weak grip. In fact if you simply balance your gun in your hands, so that someone could lift it out without resistance, applying pressure perfectly rearward on the trigger will actually stabilize the gun from wobbling, and hold it on target. Don't do this live fire obviously, you need to actually hold then gun when it actually fires, but in dry fire a gun balanced in your hands, with no grip strength that's wobbling all over is a great way to identify whether your trigger pressure is perfectly rearward throughout the trigger squeeze. The visualization above is the best technique I've found for developing a proper trigger squeeze.

Range time is when you should simply be shooting, and observing the results of what your doing. There's nothing wrong with changing a few different things if your having troubles, but you shouldn't be working on diagnosing yourself at the range, you do that at home, and you work on correcting it during dry-fire. Think of range time as practice, and collecting evidence. Don't process or analyze that evidence at the range, if you do, you'll just end up shooting worse most of the time. When you're with an instructor, he's the one analyzing your shooting and asking you to try different things. Don't try to figure out what he's having you do when you're shooting, just do as instructed without thinking. The time for thinking is before and after a shooting lesson, not during.

Anyways, I'm bored and rambling and probably make a huge amount of spelling and grammar mistakes that I'm not going to re-read. Hopefully it makes sense. Work on grip first - a proper grip is a prerequisite to visual feedback in trigger training during dry-fire. If you work on these exercises until you can do both without the front sight moving, you'll be shooting better than 90% of the guys out there in no time.

Hope this helps.

[OldmanFCSA]

Thank you everyone for your tips & tricks, as I shoot low and left while shooting a semi-auto pistol also.

[ZardozCZ]

J,

That could be a sticky somewhere. Thanks for the time and sharing. I'm self taught and have not considered many of your points. I've got some things to try now!

[gargoyle999]

Appreciate all the feedback!

jshuberg- extra thanks for taking the time to type all that up!! Really appreciate it. I have snap caps so will use those for practice. This will help a lot, I'm trying not to develop bad habits between now and when I meet for my next training session.

[Jack's My dog]

jshuberg- extra thanks for taking the time to type all that up!! Really appreciate it.

+1

[gun_fan111v2]

J,

That could be a sticky somewhere. Thanks for the time and sharing. I'm self taught and have not considered many of your points. I've got some things to try now!

+1. Thanks J!

[jshuberg]

Thanks all.

Those are exercises that I perform regularly. Don't expect you'll be able to master these techniques in a short period of time. You will see remarkable progress if you work on these things regularly though. Unlike most other training exercises, these produce observable feedback that lets you know if you're doing it right or not. The feedback they provide is actually better than observing shot placement, because they allow you to isolate one specific fundamental to the exclusion of all others. You really can't do that in live fire.

Here's another exercise that I regularly perform, but is a bit more advanced, and I recommend holding off on it until you get the previous exercises working relatively well for you. They work best with a DA or DA\SA pistol. You'll need a second person if your using a SA or striker pistol.

Get your normal shooting grip, and align your sights out in front of you. What you want to do is get the top of your front sight as level with the deck as much as possible, so if the sight has a slight ramp or angle to it, you might have to muzzle up slightly. Practice this in a mirror or with someone standing next to you and note the alignment of the sights when the front sight is perfectly level. Then have someone place a spent 9mm case on top of your front sight, and perfectly center it. You should see that it hangs over both the left and right side of the sight equally. Then squeeze the trigger without the case falling off the sight. It will likely wobble around, especially if you have a large heavy hammer, but it shouldn't fall off. If it falls off, you're imparting a motion into the frame of the pistol with your trigger squeeze. After working on this awhile, see how many times you can do this in a row before the sight walks off the sight and falls.

If you don't have another person to help with this, here's a helpful trick - hold the pistol with your weapon hand on a dresser or shelf to keep it from moving, and place the case on the sight with your support hand. Then slowly and gently wrap your support hand around the gun, and establish your shooting grip before lifting the gun off the dresser. Then slowly and carefully raise the gun up to eye level. It's more of a pain in the @ss to do it this way, but works. There may actually be a benefit to doing it this way as well, as it requires you to maintain greater balance and control of the pistol while your setting the exercise up.

Try to get to the point where you can dry fire the pistol 10-15 times before the case falls off. When you get to this point, make a mental note of the path the case takes as it walks off the sight. Observe the direction it moved after each shot. If the case walks around randomly, and doesn't fall from the same spot, this is evidence of a proper grip. If the case tends to move in one particular direction most of the time, this is evidence of an asymmetric grip. Whats actually happening is that when the hammer/striker falls it introduces a vibration into the gun. The vibration breaks the friction between the case and the sight, and the gun is able to move underneath the sight, while the sight stays in the same place above it. If the case falls off directly to the right, what that tells you is that you actually moved the gun to the left at the moment the hammer fell. This obviously works better with a metal frame pistol with a hammer, as the vibrations will be transmitted to the sight more effectively. If your running a SA gun with a hammer, have someone else carefully cock the hammer back for you.

Once you can do this 10-15 times without the case falling, and have achieved a truly neutral and symmetrical grip as evidenced by a truly random and unpredictable path the case takes off the sight, now try it with your eyes closed. It's quite likely that if you see the case walk to the left, you may be subconsciously trying to get it to walk to the right to stay on the sight. You really don't want to do that, it's cheating the exercise. You want the case to stay as perfectly balanced as possible on the sight without imparting any motions to help it stay there. Start off by taking 2 or 3 shots with your eyes open, and then close them. With your eyes closed, see the gun in your hands with your minds eye. Slowly and smoothly squeeze the trigger rearward and listen for the case hitting the floor. Then repeat until you hear that the case has fallen off. This will be harder than doing it with your eyes open, because you won't be cheating and moving the gun to re-balance the case. The goal is to be able to squeeze the trigger with your eyes closed 10+ times before the case falls off. Once you get to that point, have someone else observe you, or put a video camera on yourself zoomed in on the case to determine is it's walking off in a straight line, or if its wondering around randomly on top of the sight before falling off. Again, if the case tends to take a particular path or move a predictable way, that's evidence your grip is asymmetrical, and needs additional fine tuning.

This is the exercise that I use for developing and fine tuning precision shooting. With this exercise and thousands of hours of live fire practice, I've been able to consistently shoot 2.5" groups at 25 yards with a high quality pistol, and have on a few occasions shot sub-inch groups at 25 yards. This, along with the other exercises I posted earlier will really improve your shooting ability. The primary reason they work so well is that they amplify any errors that you're experiencing to the point of being both observable and diagnosable in real time.

I have a whole bunch more of these exercises that I've either adopted, adapted or created that maximize a shooters ability to observe, identify and correct shooting errors. Maybe I'll post some more later, but these should be good enough for most people to improve their skills.

Later...

[Randygmn]

Don't mess with the sights. It's not the gun. Have an accomplished shooter shoot it at the range. You'll see that they are on. In the unlikely event that he discovers they are off, only then have them adjusted.

Low left is usually a flinch in anticipation of recoil. Probably why you're better with the 22

[UnaStamus]

I have noticed that issue with the Shield and other shooters. I had one shooter tell me that he thought the gun was jacked up, but I was able to put rounds right on target. Any time you shoot a new gun, it's going to take some adjustment to get used to the grip and hold.

When diagnosing problems with a pistol, refer to the acronym "SAMM" to narrow down the problem.
Shooter
Ammo
Magazine
Mechanical

In this case, I'm far more apt to believe it's a shooter issue. I always caution people to have other shooters try a gun before writing the gun off as malfunctioning or problematic. Nothing too earth shattering, I know.

[xd ED]

Don't mess with the sights. It's not the gun. Have an accomplished shooter shoot it at the range. You'll see that they are on. In the unlikely event that he discovers they are off, only then have them adjusted.

Low left is usually a flinch in anticipation of recoil. Probably why you're better with the 22

Sometimes to prove that out, have the shooter hold the pistol, and do the aiming, and someone else work the trigger. Obviously this takes communication and coordination, but it immediately removes the doubts about the sights being correctly aimed.