Here's some of my thoughts regarding trigger manipultion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qahYMhDQtOA
Without getting into how to best manipulate the trigger, I think there is value in the shooter understanding exactly what goes on with the trigger and the inner workings of the gun during the firing stroke.
There are several points within the arc of trigger movement that we should be aware of. First is Trigger Forward. Last is Trigger Rearward. In between, we find the Slack, Prep and Break points. A related attribute is Trigger Reset. Often different people use the same terms for different meanings and that leads to a bit of confusion.
My definitions are:
Trigger Forward: The normal resting point of the trigger. It’s fully forward position.
Slack: The initial travel of the trigger. It consists of relatively light weight and is prior to actual sear engagement.
Prep: Following Slack, the stage where the sear is being engaged but not to the point of discharge. This is the point often referred to as “Slack Out”. In actuality, it is beyond the slack point.
Break: The point of discharge. It is at this stage that the sear is fully actuated, the hammer releases and the gun fires.
Trigger Rearward: Movement of the trigger past the Break point. Sometimes called overtravel.
Trigger Reset: The forward motion of the trigger at which point the sear has reengaged and the gun can be fired again.
Trigger Reset is the point where the mechanism is able to be manipulated to cause the gun to fire. The reset point is further forward than when the trigger is ‘Prepped’. If you simply return the trigger to the reset point and commence triggering from there, you are not going to work the trigger as smoothly as when you ‘prep’ the trigger properly.
Put another way, each shot fired should go through the same process of:
[Slack, Out]
Prep
Break [Trigger Rearward]
Reset…Prep
In other words, a single shot does not end when the shot Breaks, nor simply when the trigger is Reset. A single shot ends when the sights are confirmed and the trigger is reset & prepped for the following shot.
When learning these aspects of your trigger on the range, the gun will fire unexpectedly. That is not a bad thing. It simply is part of the learning process. Being conscious of trigger attributes early on will go a long way towards your development as a shooter, since, in my opinion, missed shots are far more attributable to poor trigger discipline than to grossly misaligned sights.
On the topic of sighting the gun, it all comes down to “Seeing what you need to see, to get the hits that you need to get.” I first heard that phraseology from Ron Avery, but, it’s been used by so many shooters that it’s hard to pin down exactly where it came from. Enos talks about the concept in ‘Practical Shooting, Beyond Fundamentals’. Plaxco talks about it in ‘Shooting From Within’. Of course, nowadays, most trainers recognize the validity of it, whether they give credit or not.
But, ‘seeing what you need to see’ assumes that you are working from a base of knowledge appropriate to the sighting problem. That means you need to be able to utilize sights correctly at full extension. A rough sight alignment or a weapon silhouette alignment only makes sense in the context of being a lesser defined variant of your traditional, perfect, sight alignment at extension.
After you have worked your perfect sight alignment, take a second and look at the relationship between your body and your gun. Study the indexes provided by the weapon silhouette on the target. Play with shifting your focus from the sights to the target and with greater and lesser attention on the sights. A big secret that someone once told me; “The gun doesn’t know and doesn’t care where you look!”
Dealing with drawstroke is easy. There is only one drawstroke. Regardless of range, regardless of obstacles, regardless of weapon system and regardless of phases of the moon, there is only one drawstroke. By incorporating everything that you need into one scheme of motion, you have a more robust drawstroke and, as a by-product, you have a much simpler learning problem.
When first working drawstroke, you ought to be aware of the ability to fire from an integral retention position, but that is not the focus. In fact, if too much focus is put on the retention aspects of the draw, and firing from retention, while teaching drawing, sighting and triggering concepts, the potential for an accident is higher than it needs to be.
For instance, when Craig Douglas & I were teaching his ECQC classes, obviously, the retention aspects/ number 2 count of the draw are focused upon. However, when Andy & I were teaching Surgical Speed Shooting classes, the focus shifts to the number 3 and 4 counts of the same drawstroke.
It is during counts 3 and 4 that the sighting and triggering concepts come into play and you can spend a lot of time and a lot of ammo working them. After you have a base of skill working the gun between 3 and 4, then you can add in firing from count 2 and transitioning to firing throughout drawstroke as you move. In the Shivworks Fighting Handgun DVD, Craig covers, in great detail, how to build the 2 in livefire and in Secrets of a Professional Shooter, Ron Avery covers a lot of the rest of the material. More recently, in the Tactical Response Advanced Fighting Pistol DVD, I cover a fair bit on drawstroke while seated, standing, seat belted in a vehicle, etc, all to illustrate the universality of drawstroke.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qahYMhDQtOA
Without getting into how to best manipulate the trigger, I think there is value in the shooter understanding exactly what goes on with the trigger and the inner workings of the gun during the firing stroke.
There are several points within the arc of trigger movement that we should be aware of. First is Trigger Forward. Last is Trigger Rearward. In between, we find the Slack, Prep and Break points. A related attribute is Trigger Reset. Often different people use the same terms for different meanings and that leads to a bit of confusion.
My definitions are:
Trigger Forward: The normal resting point of the trigger. It’s fully forward position.
Slack: The initial travel of the trigger. It consists of relatively light weight and is prior to actual sear engagement.
Prep: Following Slack, the stage where the sear is being engaged but not to the point of discharge. This is the point often referred to as “Slack Out”. In actuality, it is beyond the slack point.
Break: The point of discharge. It is at this stage that the sear is fully actuated, the hammer releases and the gun fires.
Trigger Rearward: Movement of the trigger past the Break point. Sometimes called overtravel.
Trigger Reset: The forward motion of the trigger at which point the sear has reengaged and the gun can be fired again.
Trigger Reset is the point where the mechanism is able to be manipulated to cause the gun to fire. The reset point is further forward than when the trigger is ‘Prepped’. If you simply return the trigger to the reset point and commence triggering from there, you are not going to work the trigger as smoothly as when you ‘prep’ the trigger properly.
Put another way, each shot fired should go through the same process of:
[Slack, Out]
Prep
Break [Trigger Rearward]
Reset…Prep
In other words, a single shot does not end when the shot Breaks, nor simply when the trigger is Reset. A single shot ends when the sights are confirmed and the trigger is reset & prepped for the following shot.
When learning these aspects of your trigger on the range, the gun will fire unexpectedly. That is not a bad thing. It simply is part of the learning process. Being conscious of trigger attributes early on will go a long way towards your development as a shooter, since, in my opinion, missed shots are far more attributable to poor trigger discipline than to grossly misaligned sights.
On the topic of sighting the gun, it all comes down to “Seeing what you need to see, to get the hits that you need to get.” I first heard that phraseology from Ron Avery, but, it’s been used by so many shooters that it’s hard to pin down exactly where it came from. Enos talks about the concept in ‘Practical Shooting, Beyond Fundamentals’. Plaxco talks about it in ‘Shooting From Within’. Of course, nowadays, most trainers recognize the validity of it, whether they give credit or not.
But, ‘seeing what you need to see’ assumes that you are working from a base of knowledge appropriate to the sighting problem. That means you need to be able to utilize sights correctly at full extension. A rough sight alignment or a weapon silhouette alignment only makes sense in the context of being a lesser defined variant of your traditional, perfect, sight alignment at extension.
After you have worked your perfect sight alignment, take a second and look at the relationship between your body and your gun. Study the indexes provided by the weapon silhouette on the target. Play with shifting your focus from the sights to the target and with greater and lesser attention on the sights. A big secret that someone once told me; “The gun doesn’t know and doesn’t care where you look!”
Dealing with drawstroke is easy. There is only one drawstroke. Regardless of range, regardless of obstacles, regardless of weapon system and regardless of phases of the moon, there is only one drawstroke. By incorporating everything that you need into one scheme of motion, you have a more robust drawstroke and, as a by-product, you have a much simpler learning problem.
When first working drawstroke, you ought to be aware of the ability to fire from an integral retention position, but that is not the focus. In fact, if too much focus is put on the retention aspects of the draw, and firing from retention, while teaching drawing, sighting and triggering concepts, the potential for an accident is higher than it needs to be.
For instance, when Craig Douglas & I were teaching his ECQC classes, obviously, the retention aspects/ number 2 count of the draw are focused upon. However, when Andy & I were teaching Surgical Speed Shooting classes, the focus shifts to the number 3 and 4 counts of the same drawstroke.
It is during counts 3 and 4 that the sighting and triggering concepts come into play and you can spend a lot of time and a lot of ammo working them. After you have a base of skill working the gun between 3 and 4, then you can add in firing from count 2 and transitioning to firing throughout drawstroke as you move. In the Shivworks Fighting Handgun DVD, Craig covers, in great detail, how to build the 2 in livefire and in Secrets of a Professional Shooter, Ron Avery covers a lot of the rest of the material. More recently, in the Tactical Response Advanced Fighting Pistol DVD, I cover a fair bit on drawstroke while seated, standing, seat belted in a vehicle, etc, all to illustrate the universality of drawstroke.
