Holding drills for Bullseye pistol?

[Buck13]

I dabble a little in Bullseye type shooting. Just for personal enjoyment, because I am TERRIBLE and will doubtless come in dead last if I finally get around to going to a local match this year.

My grip and trigger control certainly aren't great, but I think my biggest problem is with holding the center. My wobble isn't the 10-ring, it may not even be the black. The worst is a tendency to drop the whole gun as I approach the break, but there's PLENTY of side-to-side motions going on, too.

Are there any tutorials on addressing this problem?

 

[1KPerDay]

Does your league allow 2-handed shooting?

 

[mcb]

Arms and hand strength helps allot. One good exercise is take about a foot of broom handle or similar dowel. Hang a modest weight (about the same as your handgun, start lighter if needed) from the center on a string. Hold the stick in both hands with your arms straight out in front of you and smoothly roll the weight up and back down. Good for arms and hand and keeping your hands agile.

The extra strength will help with your wobble a good bit.

 

[Buck13]

Does your league allow 2-handed shooting?

I've played in an online group of aquaintances who do a postal match with two-handed stance, but I'm trying to develop a true offhand capability. I haven't looked too closely, but the nearest club to me that does Bullseye (in Puyallup) uses a proper one-handed rule, AFAIK.

 

[Buck13]

Arms and hand strength helps allot. One good exercise is take about a foot of broom handle or similar dowel. Hang a modest weight (about the same as your handgun, start lighter if needed) from the center on a string. Hold the stick in both hands with your arms straight out in front of you and smoothly roll the weight up and back down. Good for arms and hand and keeping your hands agile.

The extra strength will help with your wobble a good bit.

I do a fair amount of kayaking and weight training, so my strength isn't terrible. OTOH, my habit isn't to work the finger and wrist muscles very deliberately as you describe. OTOOH, almost all of my weight training is with dumbells, so a lot of my workout involves holding 50 pound dumbbells (I need to break down and buy a pair of 60s, 'cause I'm maxing out at too many reps with 50s on a couple of exercises), which should give some hand workout. Certainly my fingers/forearms get tired after sets in which I'm gripping the heavier weights.

OTOOOH, the only upper-body lift for which I use the 50s is bent-over dumbbell row. I was a bike racer long ago, so I used to have impressively strong legs (which I've lost) but my upper body strength has never been respectable for a guy. I can only biceps curl a 40 pound dumbbell about a half-dozen times, and that's standing, not on a preacher bench.

I seem to be biased toward slow-twitch muscles. A couple of years ago I sea kayaked 100 kilometers (62 miles) in one day, while most people think a third to half of that is a long day, so endurance seems to be my forte, not strength or power. Of course, I planned the trip with respect to the lunar cycle so the tidal currents helped me out as much as possible (and also used the full moon for the last 1/4 of the route, finishing at 1 AM) because I'm not a complete fool, so it was probably more like paddling 50 miles.

I should try your dowel rolling exercise. I think we may even have a little bar made for that, which we neglect.

 

[Mike OTDP]

Get a 2-5 lb weight. Hold it at arm's length for 1 minute. Repeat for several sets...you can keep one by your TV set.

Extend both arms. Start with 25 small circles in each direction. Work up to 100 small circles.

Also, do a lot of dry firing. 25 rounds/day minimum, 50 is better. This is the key to truly accurate shooting...until you can release the shot without disturbing the sights, you won't get good results. Be sure to keep the hold for at leas three seconds AFTER releasing the shot.

 

[starling]

look into isometrics training and modify it for your prefered shooting stance. Ankle weights on wrists work well for this.

For trigger control look into a trigger trainer such as...
https://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Assembly-Immediately-Increase-Shooting-Accuracy/dp/B00D4FDDHU
buy one with sights if possible or modify the trainer with your own. Doesnt need to be that fancy just something to give you a reference. Even something as simple as legos and hot glue can work.

Snap caps and lots of dryfire on your pistol. Good for quick and casual training.

Outside that.... pushups never hurt if you can do them. Little bit of core work is helpful as well. Controlled breathing should not be overlooked. Bullseye shooting a whole different thing than slapping triggers at big steal targets.

Bullseye shooting is where its at though. Tactical shooting is boring and lacks challenge for me. People who like tactical type shooting would be better off with paintball where targets shoot back!

Dont drink Too much coffe before shooting. Relax and have fun. Aim small miss small!

 

[LiveLife]

I dabble a little in Bullseye type shooting. Just for personal enjoyment, because I am TERRIBLE and will doubtless come in dead last if I finally get around to going to a local match this year.

My grip and trigger control certainly aren't great, but I think my biggest problem is with holding the center. My wobble isn't the 10-ring, it may not even be the black. The worst is a tendency to drop the whole gun as I approach the break, but there's PLENTY of side-to-side motions going on, too.

Are there any tutorials on addressing this problem?

You can start here - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/trigger-control.834737/page-4#post-11320782

From U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, Pistol Marksmanship Training Guide - http://www.saveourguns.com/Ar_Marks_Un_Pistol_Train_Guide.pdf​

Chapter III​

Trigger Control
​

And at 2:00 minute mark of video, Brian Zins states, "You can hold sight alignment and sight picture on your pistol all day long.

When does it change?

When you move the trigger. Sights move. They are going to move. They have to move.

... No matter how big your hands ... strong you are ... death grip ... as soon as you apply force ... on this pistol, it's going to move" - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/trigger-control.834737/page-3#post-11255509

 

[Soupy44]

How good are you at keeping the sights aligned dry firing at a blank wall? It took me a while to embrace this drill, but it drastically improved my BE shooting when I did. I thought it was my hold for a while too.

Your hand pointing the aligned.pistol sights 1/32nd of an inch to a side is still a good shot in the black. Your trigger finger moving the sights 1/32nd of an inch is in the white or worse.

Front sight and trigger, everything else is gravy!

 

[Soupy44]

And check out the Bullseye List Forum. All BE shooters there.

 

[Russ57]

What gun, caliber, and type of sights are you using?

To start with, I'd recommend a .22 LR semi-auto pistol. Mount an Ultradot on it. Send it off to a gunsmith and have a "roll" trigger job done. You want some pre-travel and then a clean 2.5-3# break with little to no creep.

I would start off shooting from the bench with two hands and a sandbag. If you can't shoot perfect 100 scores either your gun/ammo is a problem or you are the problem. Get that sorted out ASAP. At 25 yards I wouldn't settle for less than 100/8-10X

Find a gun that fits you. I like a High Standard but don't like the S&W 41. The Ruger Mark 3 that my brother gave me (when he took his High Standard back) is almost as good at a fraction of the price. Off the bench it will hold the ten ring at 50 yards on a 25 yard target with CCI standard plastic box ammo.

FWIW. They say that one's "wobble" area is like a sideways figure eight. I don't know how "they" determined that but let's take it as a fact. That means your wobble is going to cross the X ring twice as often as the outside of your hold area. There is always going to be a lag between what our eyes see and when the trigger gets pressed. Moral of the story, don't try to time your shots. Doing so tends to guarantee you are shooting when at the outside extreme of your hold.

In rapid fire concentrate on a good clean trigger break and developing a cadence. In slow fire lower the gun to the table after each shot. Take at least four or five breathes. Then raise the gun and if you don't break the shot in 3-4 seconds put the gun down. Chicken finger is setting in and will lead to bad habits like jerking off a shoot when you can see yourself trembling from fatigue.

A match is 270 rounds. 2/3rd's of that will be .45 acp. I'd suggest (minimum) 600 rounds per week for practice. Unless you have deep pockets you will need to reload.

 

[bummer7]

Dry fire, dry fire, and dry fire some more. However, don't overdo it. If tired, stop and pick it up later. The whole idea of dry firing is to help you develop good habits and being able to call your shots. Knowing and seeing your front sight when you squeeze the trigger.

And how is your sight picture? Are you using center hold? A six o'clock hold? A sub-six hold? For me, i found using a sub six aiming area easier for me to see and maintain the front sight picture.

Dont worry about where you stand in the rankings. In bullseye, you really are competing against yourself.

 

[Mike OTDP]

+1 on the sub-six hold. I picked up a couple of World Muzzle-Loading Championship medals with it.

 

[Buck13]

How good are you at keeping the sights aligned dry firing at a blank wall? It took me a while to embrace this drill, but it drastically improved my BE shooting when I did. I thought it was my hold for a while too.

Yeah, that's a great drill! I did a little archery and reading about archery around ten years ago. Archers call that "blank bale" training, since traditionally you place your target on a stack of haybales, so no target = blank bale. They have another funny term: "target panic" which I think is the same as what we call "trying to grab a ten." I don't think I've every heard a firearm shooter use that term. In this case, "grabbing a ten" seems to explain the problem better, though.

On a good day and when I get the right grip, I can break a fair number of my dry shots against a blank wall without MUCH movement. Rarely is there none or so little that I don't really see it, but I've gotten a lot better than I was some time ago. One obvious problem is that I can't do it very predictably, meaning that even on a good day I usually have to adjust my grip once or twice to find the sweet spot. So, when stepping up for live fire after putting the gun down each time anything could happen. Obviously, I need to just keep drilling this with great attention to how I'm gripping and hope to become at least a bit more consistent in taking a proper grip.

 

[Buck13]

What gun, caliber, and type of sights are you using?

I have three Mark IIs, a Dan Wesson Pointman9 (9mm 1911) and just received a Springfield Range Officer .45 a few days ago, so I'm barely getting started in centerfire equipment.

One of the MkIIs is a 10", so too heavy for BE (also to long to be legal, I believe) but good for IHMSA, which I've done once. That was fun, although I didn't have good sight settings for 75 and 100 yards so need to work on that to score some turkeys and rams next time.

The 6-7/8" tapered bull barrel is my favorite and still wears original iron sights, too. Trigger is only fair but it was probably the best of the three as I acquired them. I don't love the stock flat MkII grips. It has an Altamont target grip that is pretty, but may not really be the right thing for me. I just bought a Volthane MkIII grip which I'll see if can be made to work on it, or if I need to keep looking.

Finally I have a 5.5" stainless Target. It had the worst trigger, but a few weeks ago I bought an entire gripframe (minus mainspring assembly) with a Clark trigger off Rimfire Central to put on it and it now has the best trigger of my MkIIs, which isn't saying much, and I'm FAR from a competent judge of BE triggers. At least it doesn't have overtravel now. That frame came with wraparound Pachmayer grips that I don't love, but might live with.

I put a Holosun sight on the 5.5" a couple of years ago. I realize that's not as good as an Ultradot, but I'm not sure it matters unless I can solve my various glaring failures in technique. More to the point, it's shown me that while a dot sight does work better, I enjoy shooting irons more. So, I need to decide whether I care more about my final score and upgrade to a better dot sight, or just enjoy the struggle with irons!

The 1911s are both right out of the box, so no provision for mounting an Ultradot anyway, without some work. The Dan Wesson is nice, but the notch on the rear sight is a bit narrow for my tastes. I'm 6" 1" (barely) and I think it would be better for someone with shorter arms, at least in sustained fire. I've only shot factory ammo through it but I'm gearing up to reload some things for BE. The DW has a Houge wrap-around rubber grip. Despite its flatness, I think I like it OK, so I'll probably put one on the RO too.

As people on the BE forum suggested, I probably should have been patient and tried to find a better setup on their Commercial Row page for not TOO much over my original budget but I was too antsy to buy a .45 quickly.

Supposedly the Range Officer is unfired. The seller claimed he bought two a half-dozen years ago, shot one and saved the other. Presumably he shot and kept the one that he liked better, of course, so it may not have the best trigger Springfield ever made. I don't think it's terrible, but again, I'm a poor judge. It's certainly stiffer the the DWs, but the mainspring is way heaver, so that's unsurprising. I just found my 1/16" allen wrench and adjusted the overtravel screw and that certainly helped calm the sights down a bit in a couple of test pulls. (I wonder if I could get an overtravel screw installed in my Ruger Redhawk trigger? That might benefit it greatly.)

 

[Buck13]

And how is your sight picture? Are you using center hold? A six o'clock hold? A sub-six hold? For me, i found using a sub six aiming area easier for me to see and maintain the front sight picture.

I'm really too green to say, since I've hacked away with center hold my whole life but never was very serious. I've tried six o'clock and didn't love it, so went back to center. I've never tried sub-six but I see the appeal. I should give it a try. My biggest objection is that it makes it awkward to shoot the gun at any other type of target, unless you want to be cranking the sights up and down all the time.

 

[.38 Special]

As a fellow ex-bike racer who spent a few years pursuing Bullseye pretty seriously, my best advice is not to worry about it too much. Everyone has a "wobble zone", and while it tends to decrease as you improve, it really isn't the most important component of the shot process. I actually gave my poor wimpy bike-riding shoulder a good case of tendonitis with the dumbbell...

As others have pointed out, dryfire practice - with sight alignment and trigger control the key components - is your best friend. You also can "blank bale" with your gun using live ammunition. Either turn your target around backwards, or just use a blank piece of paper. Quite a few folks - including me - discover that when you are focused entirely on perfect sight alignment throughout the trigger press, your groups shrink dramatically. The trick is do everything the same way even when confronted with the scoring rings.

 

[anothernewb]

Get a 2-5 lb weight. Hold it at arm's length for 1 minute. Repeat for several sets...you can keep one by your TV set.

Extend both arms. Start with 25 small circles in each direction. Work up to 100 small circles.

Also, do a lot of dry firing. 25 rounds/day minimum, 50 is better. This is the key to truly accurate shooting...until you can release the shot without disturbing the sights, you won't get good results. Be sure to keep the hold for at leas three seconds AFTER releasing the shot.

^ this right there. Started with 2 pounders then worked my way up to 5 pounders at 90 seconds. forward, then rest, and out to the side then rest

On the plus side - that training also got me 1st place during octoberfest at a local bar - holding a full mug at arms length. Lasted the longest without spilling.
$100 and Drank all day for free!

 

[MrBorland]

In this case, "grabbing a ten" seems to explain the problem better, though.

Yes, the issue can be a mental, rather than physical issue.

One thing I've done at the range to get re-focused is to simply remove the target altogether and just shoot into the berm, focusing only on sight picture and trigger control. When a target's present, there's a tendency to "want" a good shot, and all kinds of badness happens. Practicing a solid hold and sight picture gets the image of a solid hold and sight picture in your head.

I've never shot BE, so take it FWIW.

I was a bike racer long ago

As a fellow ex-bike racer

Well, dang, I'll make it three. We could don our lycra, ride to the coffee shop and tell tall tales about epic rides. Not much different than hanging out at the range

 

[Slamfire]

I dabble a little in Bullseye type shooting. Just for personal enjoyment, because I am TERRIBLE and will doubtless come in dead last if I finally get around to going to a local match this year.

My grip and trigger control certainly aren't great, but I think my biggest problem is with holding the center. My wobble isn't the 10-ring, it may not even be the black. The worst is a tendency to drop the whole gun as I approach the break, but there's PLENTY of side-to-side motions going on, too.

Are there any tutorials on addressing this problem?

I am a mediocre Bullseye Pistol Shooter and it has taken years to go from awful to mediocre. I don't know if I have the lifetime left to go from mediocre to good. Hope the Good Lord accommodates me in that regard.

One of the first things to start on is a repeatable shooting stance. You don't let go of the pistol between magazine changes, you don't shuffle your feet, you find a solid comfortable position and you stay there until it is time to score your target. You find the best grip on your pistol and you maintain it. That keeps your finger in the same position from trigger pull to trigger pull. You find the best body orientation relative to the target, and you maintain it. The purpose of this is to reduce the shooting errors from positional changes.Which is real, you change your stance, you change your grip, the point of impact will change. And until your position is stable enough that you start seeing patterns, you will never figure out where you are going wrong.

What I found with a constant position, is that I flinch, and flinch badly with the 45 ACP. My scores with the 22lr have gone up, and are acceptable. I have not figured out how to trick the body that the big, bad 45 ACP round is not going off! So, I push the 1911, twist the 1911, hit the trigger too hard, etc. I shoot better scores in rapid and time fire when I use a "Monster" grip, and am grim about the recoil. Slow fire, I have too much time to think about the pain.

In so far as wobble, yes, you are going to have wobble. You will never be rock solid rigid. Some good advice that I am trying to see if I can do is start at 12 OC on the black, let the pistol drop through the black, as I squeeze the trigger. The goal is, have the thing go off without me anticipating the recoil. I am not there yet. I do believe, that when I am in the groove with the 22 lr, that the brain pulls the trigger when it recognizes a good sight picture. Truly, if you can hold the black, you will get tens and X's.

In terms of physical condition, when I decided to work on my arms and shoulders with weights, I shot my best 45 ACP scores. So physical strength does matter, if only we all had the time to do biceps and triceps.

 

[.38 Special]

Well, dang, I'll make it three. We could don our lycra, ride to the coffee shop and tell tall tales about epic rides. Not much different than hanging out at the range

I'm old enough that I raced in wool jerseys and a leather hairnet. I'm also old enough that nobody wants to see me in Lycra!

 

[Soupy44]

Sounds like dry fire practice will be big for you. Split it up between on a blank wall and with a small dot on the wall to keep things interesting.

The first skill to master is squeezing the shot off without moving the sights picture. Then you have to do that with a dot to aim at. If you can master those two things, you're easily an Expert level shooter.

You'll also repeatedly find new levels of focusing on your front sight. Just when you think you are doing all you can, you'll find a new gear.

 

[tominboise]

I am not a BE shooter but i do dry fire a lot. I recently started putting a nickel on the top of the gun being dry fired, to force myself to hold the sight alignment through the trigger break. I believe it has helped. As a note, when dry firing something like a SA blackhawk with a heavy hammer fall, the nickel pretty much gets knocked off from the hammer fall. Not so much on most other handguns. It really helps when dry firing double action revolver.

 

[anothernewb]

As has been said. only if you're one of those rare inhuman shooters - you can't ever stop the wobble. Once the weight workouts have extended your ability to hold steady - You learn to work with it. Hold an empty cocked gun and watch your sights. do it long enough and you'll see a pattern to the wobble. normal muscle corrections as well as heartbeat influence. concentrate on that front sight and try to match your trigger pull when it sweeps or bounces across the bullseye.

 

[MrBorland]

I'm old enough that I raced in wool jerseys and a leather hairnet.

I started riding in the wool/leather era. Still have my Protog shorts somewhere. At some point, local pros were coming home from Europe showing off their new lycra shorts. Hardshell helmets and clipless pedals came soon after. I recently donated my Colnago Super (decked out in Campy Super Record & 36-spoke tubulars) to a local collector. It's heavy by today's standards, but rides like a dream. I designed my current (steel) frame around that Colnago's geometry, so it's a modernized version of it, and (on the occasion when I actually have time now to ride) it rides like a dream as well.

I recently started putting a nickel on the top of the gun being dry fired, to force myself to hold the sight alignment through the trigger break. I believe it has helped...It really helps when dry firing double action revolver

Nice. When you've perfected that and are looking for a new challenge, try balancing the nickel on edge, then try to cycle the action (letting the trigger return before the hammer falls). It's do-able, but takes practice (and a smooth action). It's tough to just get & keep the coin balanced, so it's more of a stability and trigger control drill than it is a "sight picture" drill.