I saw this again just the other day. A well known gun trainer slingshots the slide on his 1911.
I have heard all the advantages of this including, fewer 5 and 1 groups, reliability enhanced, full travel of the recoil spring.
Maybe the full travel benefits the reliability of some guns, but they'd have to be pretty marginal to begin with. For comparison, I can "ride" the slide of my M&P all the way down, stopping it whenever I want, and it will still load the next round and go into battery every time (note that I've only ever tested a clean gun in this manner). Based on this, I'm pretty confident that pulling down on the slide stop would work reliably.
The main advantage of pulling back on the slide is that it works equally well on all autoloaders and is the same basic motion, whereas slide stops may vary in how they function.
But then he press checks the slide. Pulling the slide back slightly till it unlocks then checking for a round in the chamber and letting the slide return.
Checking with your finger because you can not trust a loaded chamber indicator not to get debris or something under it and give a false indication.
Doesn't this negate any benefit from slingshotting the slide?
I don't see why it would, unless pulling the cartridge out partially and pushing it back into the chamber has some negative effects that I'm not aware of. The gun doesn't remember how it got into battery in the first place, and as long as it ends up in the same state after a "press check," then everything should be fine.
Are we "overtraining' ourselves?
It is kind of like putting a spoiler on the rear of a front wheel drive car?
Well, I don't know about training, but you might be worrying about too much.
I don't think it hurts to have a better, more complete understanding of how your firearm functions unless it confuses you or makes you worry, which can be remedied by additional learning.
Guys with SA .45s or who HAVE hammers to cock..usualy dont have the problem wtih the "first flyer" the way Glocks or other hammerless designs do.
But aren't the trigger pulls of Glocks consistent from the first pull to the last? My M&P always has the same trigger pull, and it doesn't have a hammer, either. While Glocks are technically half-cocked as opposed to fully-cocked like M&Ps, my understanding is that they are always half-cocked and therefore always have the same trigger pull as well (I've never noticed anything different when shooting them).
the 5 and 1 effect is a result of the manually loaded round being loaded differently than the following rounds. if you want all the rounds to hit with utmost consistency, manually load the first round and then fire it off...allowing the round in the chamber to be loaded by the action of the recoiling slide
Does the round sit in the chamber differently, or something like that? If so, then wouldn't doing a press check cause that to change?