How To Gently Squeeze Trigger In Rapid Fire?

[HGM22]

Any tips for moving from the slow-fire gentle squeeze to a more rapid pace while still maintaining proper trigger pull?

 

[Bobson]

Progress slowly. Here's a good drill to work on. Obviously your progression may not be as rapid as Travis Haley's.

https://youtu.be/ckhJTXywKcQ

Edit:

Yes, this drill will help with and is named for practice with the draw. That said, if you're fair to yourself and make your shots hit the way they're supposed to, your speed on the trigger will naturally improve as well, while maintaining the proper trigger press. Just don't rush things.

 

[Jeff White]

Start slow pressing the trigger straight back until the hammer drops or the striker is released depending on the type of action on your weapon.

Slowly let the pressure off the trigger until it resets. You should be able to hear and feel the trigger reset. Then repeat.

You will get smoother and faster.

A good trigger drill you can practice anywhere is to place the pad of your trigger finger on your thumbnail. Hold your other fingers straight out. Press against your thumbnail like it was the trigger and keep your other fingers straight.

You will find it hard at first because our fingers are wired to move together. This will help you with your trigger control and along with practicing only releasing the trigger to where it resets will make you faster and more accurate.

Smooth is slow and slow is fast. The late Louis Awerbuck used to say that. Work on making your trigger pull smooth and on learning to move just your trigger finger and the speed will come.

Don't just try to do it faster. That will be counter productive. Press, ease to reset, repeat.

Concentrate on feeling the trigger reset. Take it slow and the speed will come.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[old lady new shooter]

Progress slowly. Here's a good drill to work on. Obviously your progression may not be as rapid as Travis Haley's.

https://youtu.be/ckhJTXywKcQ

Edit:

Yes, this drill will help with and is named for practice with the draw. That said, if you're fair to yourself and make your shots hit the way they're supposed to, your speed on the trigger will naturally improve as well, while maintaining the proper trigger press. Just don't rush things.

Very good video, thanks for posting.

 

[drband]

Good drill. Nice to see it all broken down with a structured method.

 

[ATLDave]

Forget "gentle." What matters is straight and to the rear. You can pull fast and hard, as long as it's straight to the rear.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...You can pull fast and hard, as long as it's straight to the rear.

Jerking the trigger never helps. What one is looking for is the compressed surprise break.

1. The first principle of accurate shooting is trigger control: a smooth press straight back on the trigger with only the trigger finger moving. Maintain your focus on the front sight (or the reticle if using a scope) as you press the trigger, increasing pressure on the trigger until the shot breaks. Don't try to predict exactly when the gun will go off nor try to cause the shot to break at a particular moment. This is what Jeff Cooper called the "surprise break."
   
   
2. By keeping focus on the front sight (or reticle) and increasing pressure on the trigger until the gun fires, you don’t anticipate the shot breaking and avoid jerking the trigger. But if you try to make the shot break, you usually wind up jerking the trigger.
   
   
3. You'll want to be able to perform the fundamentals reflexively, on demand without conscious thought. You do that by practicing them slowly to develop smoothness. Then smooth becomes fast.
   
   
   • Again, remember that practice doesn't make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
     
     
   • Practice also makes permanent. If you keep practicing doing something poorly, you will become an expert at doing it poorly.
   
   
4. Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of the gun firing "by surprise." They feel that when using the gun for practical applications, e. g., hunting or self defense, they need to be able to make the gun fire right now. But if you try to make the gun fire right now, you will almost certainly jerk the trigger thus jerking the gun off target and missing your shot. That's where the "compressed surprise break" comes in.
   
   
   • As you practice (perfectly) and develop the facility to reflexively (without conscious thought) apply a smooth, continuously increasing pressure to the trigger the time interval between beginning to press and the shot breaking gets progressively shorter until it become indistinguishable from being instantaneous. In other words, that period of uncertainty during which the shot might break, but you don't know exactly when, becomes vanishingly short. And that is the compressed surprise break.
     
     
   • Here's an interesting video in which Jeff Cooper explains the compressed surprise break. While he is demonstrating with a handgun, the same principles apply with a rifle.
   
   
5. It may help to understand the way humans learn a physical skill.
   
   
   • In learning a physical skill, we all go through a four step process:
     
     
     • unconscious incompetence, we can't do something and we don't even know how to do it;
       
       
     • conscious incompetence, we can't physically do something even though we know in our mind how to do it;
       
       
     • conscious competence, we know how to do something but can only do it right if we concentrate on doing it properly; and
       
       
     • unconscious competence, at this final stage we know how to do something and can do it reflexively (as second nature) on demand without having to think about it.
     
     
   • To get to the third stage, you need to think through the physical task consciously in order to do it perfectly. You need to start slow; one must walk before he can run. The key here is going slow so that you can perform each repetition properly and smoothly. Don't try to be fast. Try to be smooth. Now here's the kicker: slow is smooth and smooth is fast. You are trying to program your body to perform each of the components of the task properly and efficiently. As the programing takes, you get smoother; and as you get smoother you get more efficient and more sure, and therefore, faster.
     
     
   • I have in fact seen this over and over, both in the classes I've been in and with students that I've helped train. Start slow, consciously doing the physical act smoothly. You start to get smooth, and as you get smooth your pace will start to pick up. And about now, you will have reached the stage of conscious competence. You can do something properly and well as long as you think about it.
     
     
   • To go from conscious competence to the final stage, unconscious competence, is usually thought to take around 5,000 good repetitions. The good news is that dry practice will count. The bad news is that poor repetitions don't count and can set you back. You need to work at this to get good.
     
     
   • If one has reached the stage of unconscious competence as far as trigger control is concerned, he will be able to consistently execute a proper, controlled trigger press quickly and without conscious thought. Of course one needs to practice regularly and properly to maintain proficiency, but it's easier to maintain it once achieved than it was to first achieve it.

 

[ATLDave]

Frank, I understand the concept of a compressed surprise break. Relatively few of the best speed/practical shooters in the world currently espouse that description for what they're doing on most of their shots.

 

[Frank Ettin]

....I understand the concept of a compressed surprise break. Relatively few of the best speed/practical shooters in the world currently espouse that description for what they're doing on most of their shots.....

Really? Do you have some documentation to support that? How do they describe what they do? Are they using especially light, competition triggers? How does "pull hard and fast" not translate to "jerking the trigger" to someone trying to transition from a slow trigger press to shooting more quickly?

 

[ATLDave]

Here's just one example from a quick google search: http://www.handgunsmag.com/tactics-training/a-sweeping-trigger-technique/

But maybe ny32182 will weigh in. He's a national-level USPSA competitor.

 

[ATLDave]

Here's Rob Leatham explaining it: https://youtu.be/YLRxohRdIys?t=315

He says: "We commonly blame jerking the trigger as being a problem. The truth of the matter is I'm shooting ten shots with a draw in three seconds. To pull that off, you have to jerk the trigger on every single shot you fire. I know you traditionalists out there are going to hate hearing that, but the truth of the matter is there's no way to shoot that quickly with a bunch of slow trigger squeezes. So you have to develop the ability to jerk the trigger without moving anything else."

 

[Jeff White]

Dave,
There is a huge difference between how a national level competitor with hundreds of thousands or more rounds of trigger time does then how a beginner should start. I seem to recall this discussion happening a few years back when some national ranked shooter advocated slapping the trigger.

Someone with that kind of experience is not slapping the trigger, they are simply executing the fundamentals of a good trigger pull fast enough that it seems like they are. This comes with those hundreds of thousands of correct repetitions they have. They have reached unconscious competence.

You can't start a beginner off trying to shoot with the same speed a national ranked competitor shoots at saying "pull fast and hard, just pull straight back". Most people will fail at that until they develop a correct trigger pull, moving only their trigger finger. And that takes a lot of trigger time be it live fire or dry fire.

I am always a bit leery of training advice from super talented individuals be they shooters or athletes. People who have an exceptional, natural talent for a skill often have difficulty teaching others how they do it because it's natural to them. Very few of the coaches in Major League Baseball were Hall of Fame players. But they do have the ability to teach, even to teach the future Hall of Fame players how to use their natural talent.

 

[ATLDave]

Jeff, I hear what you're saying, but the OP asked about how to move FROM executing a slow, bullseye-type trigger squeeze to faster shooting. If what he means is shooting a shot once a second instead of once every five seconds, then fine. Otherwise, though, there's no sense in lying to him.

In shooting, there's a lot of dogma about "fundamentals." A true fundamental is a non-negotiable thing. When we call something a fundamental when it isn't, then that can later hang up someone's development. A lot of Cooper disciples found that out in the 80's when Letham and Enos and other shooters started eating their lunch by ignoring Cooper's "fundamentals" on trigger control and weaver stance, etc.

Here's what it takes to shoot fast: 1. Aim the gun pointed sufficiently precisely to achieve the level of accuracy you require (aligning sights helps immensely with this for anything but very close targets). 2. Pull the trigger straight to the rear without disturbing the gun's aim/alignment (or at least not beyond the point where the gun points outside your acceptable hit area). 3. Recover/return the gun from recoil to a state of sufficient alignment to permit another shot (again, sights really help with this past a certain, close distance). 4. Repeat step 2.

Now, if the ONLY way you can accomplish step 2 is with a gentle squeeze technique, that can be a limiting factor in your overall speed, provided you get reasonably proficient at seeing the sights at speed and have some decent recoil control. Many shooters never get decent recoil control and/or the ability to see the sights at speed, so trigger speed isn't their limiting factor. Fine. They can keep trying to get surprised by the break. Won't hurt them.

But saying that is THE method, or even the best/optimal method, is misleading, IMO. And it's certainly not what shooters who are actually fast are doing, nor is what most of them perceive themselves to be doing (though a few still say they do that, despite it being quite evident that they do not).

I would also add that one doesn't have to be a world-class competition shooter to run up against the limits of the surprise break. Many fairly casual/low-level competitive shooters bump up against this dogma and have to move past it to get better.

 

[Frank Ettin]

Here's just one example from a quick google search: http://www.handgunsmag.com/tactics-training/a-sweeping-trigger-technique/

Okay, but in that article the author is comparing the techniques discussed to the slow, bulleseye shooting type trigger press:

• ...we’ve been drilled to slowly squeeze the trigger.....

  and
  
  

• ...Now change the game so that speed is a major component of a good score, such as in IPSC or IDPA, and that slowly squeezing technique goes out the window....

And most of the other discussion centers on whether or not to reset:

...Jarrett and Leatham use a “sweeping” trigger finger motion—literally lifting their finger fully off the trigger between shots.....

But Hobdell seems to use a variation of the compressed surprise break:

...Every time he points the gun and wants it to go off, it goes off. He called his trigger technique a “surprise, compressed break,” tantamount to slapping the trigger, but without lifting his finger from the trigger....

Here's Rob Leatham explaining it: https://youtu.be/YLRxohRdIys?t=315

He says: "We commonly blame jerking the trigger as being a problem. The truth of the matter is I'm shooting ten shots with a draw in three seconds. To pull that off, you have to jerk the trigger on every single shot you fire. I know you traditionalists out there are going to hate hearing that, but the truth of the matter is there's no way to shoot that quickly with a bunch of slow trigger squeezes. So you have to develop the ability to jerk the trigger without moving anything else."

But the compressed surprise break is not a "slow squeeze" of the trigger -- nor is it a jerk. It is an apparently instantaneous shot, but it is executed in a way that doesn't move anything else.

When one has mastered the compressed surprise break he consciously decides to take the shot and consciously initiates pressure on the trigger. The shot breaks an imperceptible interval later.

Remember that no action is truly instantaneous. There is a time interval between each of the events in the chain of events leading to the act having been executed -- the eye seeing the sights on target (or the gun indexed) --> the brain registering what the eye has seen --> the brain deciding to shoot --> the brain sending out the instruction to the trigger finger to begin pressing on the trigger --> the trigger finger beginning to apply pressure to the trigger --> the sear moving and releasing the hammer or striker --> the firing pin or striker hitting the primer --> the primer igniting --> the primer igniting the propellant --> the burning propellant building up enough gas pressure to begin the bullet's travel down the barrel --> the bullet exiting the barrel.

When a shot is properly executed, including a compressed surprise break, the intervals between each link in that chain of events will be vanishingly short. It will be perceived as instantaneous.

Remember that part of the challenge in helping people learn a physical skill is looking for useful ways to describe how the thing is done -- ways that can be translated into action.

The concept of the surprise break helps us to teach people to fire the gun without anticipating the shot, or disturbing the index of the gun on target, or flinching. Then by mastering the trigger pass so the interval of uncertainty about when the gun will actually fire become vanishingly short, the need to shoot quickly is answered.

The surprise break leading to the compressed surprise break is a well tested, over decades of training many thousands or shooters, way of teaching trigger control. The goal is to program out the common errors of jerking the trigger or flinching. And when one has mastered the compressed surprise break he might not know exactly when the shot will break, but he will know within a nano second (or something on that order) when the shot will break -- probably less time than the interval between the brain making the decision to shoot and the finger actually beginning to apply pressure on the trigger.

...I hear what you're saying, but the OP asked about how to move FROM executing a slow, bullseye-type trigger squeeze to faster shooting. If what he means is shooting a shot once a second instead of once every five seconds, then fine. Otherwise, though, there's no sense in lying to him....

Dave, no one is lying to him, and I can assure you that in classes, such as those at Gunsite, we are using the compressed surprise break and are shooting considerably faster than one shot a second.

.....Pull the trigger straight to the rear without disturbing the gun's aim/alignment (or at least not beyond the point where the gun points outside your acceptable hit area)....

That's the trick, isn't it? Exactly how do you do that? Exactly how do you explain to someone else how to do that?

Indeed nothing in the article you linked to describes how to pull the trigger without disturbing [as little as acceptable under the circumstances] the index of the gun on target. The shooters explaining their techniques merely assume that the student knows how to do that and can do that on demand.

In fact, apparently Rob Leatham understands that, as you quote him:

Here's Rob Leatham explaining it: https://youtu.be/YLRxohRdIys?t=315

He says: ....So you have to develop the ability to jerk the trigger without moving anything else."

But he doesn't tell you how to develop that ability.

The starting point to learning to shoot fast and accurately without moving the gun [unacceptably] off target is being able to break the shot without moving the gun. And that's what the surprise break and the compressed surprise break is about.

 

[ATLDave]

You learn to pull the trigger fast without disturbing the sights by watching the sights as you pull the trigger fast. The sights will tell you in dry fire whether you are pulling straight back. The sights will tell you in live fire whether you are pulling straight back. And then the target will tell you whether you were lying to yourself about seeing your sights.

And if the "surprise" shot is happening "an imperceptible interval" after the shooter applies pressure, and it does so every time, the shooter would have to be extremely unobservant to be surprised by it after a couple of shots. Query whether such a person should really be handling guns at all.

 

[drband]

This is pretty interesting stuff. Hope you all continue the discussion!

 

[ATLDave]

FWIW, I have a lot of respect for Mssrs. Ettin and White; I hope neither of them mistake my views on this subject, and my expression of them, for any sort of animus or contempt directed towards them.

 

[Frank Ettin]

You learn to pull the trigger fast without disturbing the sights by watching the sights as you pull the trigger fast. The sights will tell you in dry fire whether you are pulling straight back. The sights will tell you in live fire whether you are pulling straight back. And then the target will tell you whether you were lying to yourself about seeing your sights.....

Yes, watching the sights while dry firing (and the target, in live fire) will tell you whether you're doing what you want to do. But looking at them won't tell you how to do it.

I've had plenty of students who were frustrated because they just couldn't seem to keep the sights aligned as they broke "dry" shots in dry practice. Their sights were telling them that they were doing it wrong, but they couldn't figure out how to do it right -- so that the sights would tell them what they wanted to hear.

...And if the "surprise" shot is happening "an imperceptible interval" after the shooter applies pressure, and it does so every time, the shooter would have to be extremely unobservant to be surprised by it after a couple of shots. Query whether such a person should really be handling guns at all.

Let's not overwork the "surprise" concept. The gun firing really isn't a surprise. Because one intends to fire the gun he's not surprised when the gun fires.

In teaching trigger control the concept of the surprise break helps explain --

• to the person who has never fired a gun that when properly pressing the trigger he will fire the gun; but he won't know exactly when in an interval of perhaps a second beginning with his application of pressure on the trigger that will happen; and
  
  
• with some experience that interval wil shrink to something more on the order of 0.5 of a second; and
  
  
• with real mastery that interval will shrink further to something on the order of 0.0...01 of a second.

Going through things in that way can, and has, helped people who couldn't get their sights to stay still during dry fire finally get those sights to stay still during dry fire.

That's the way we can teach, and have taught, students to to press the trigger without disturbing the index of the gun on target.

....I hope neither of them mistake my views on this subject, and my expression of them, for any sort of animus or contempt directed towards them...

I certainly don't. This is a good discussion.

 

[Jeff White]

Dave, this kind of discussion is what THR is all about. Hopefully everyone is learning something from it.

 

[ATLDave]

Jeff, Frank, glad you guys are not perceiving my directness on this topic as rudeness. I'm kind of passionate about this topic because the small USPSA club of which I am currently president* gets a LOT of new-to-speed shooters. Many of them have a solid foundation of conventional instruction, with lots of "compressed surprise break" and "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" stuff drilled into their heads (often by very competent, skilled, and expensive instructors!). Some of that stuff serves them well, and some is dogma that really holds them back, particularly when it comes to going fast. So I think it's important to be open with shooters who are in the earlier stages of development about which techniques/approaches are truly fundamental, and which are learning techniques that may be useful, but which may need to be discarded at some point.

I've got a bunch of other specific thoughts and reactions to Frank's most recent and thoughtful-as-always post; I'll try to post it after organizing my thoughts for a bit, perhaps this evening.

* I hasten to add that I do not claim any exceptional level of personal skill in shooting. I would say that I am competent at certain aspects of it, but there are MANY who are better than me by ENORMOUS amounts. I shoot with people all the time who are much better shooters than I am.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...Many of them have a solid foundation of conventional instruction, with lots of "compressed surprise break" and "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" stuff drilled into their heads (often by very competent, skilled, and expensive instructors!). Some of that stuff serves them well, and some is dogma that really holds them back, particularly when it comes to going fast. ...

I think there is something to this, so I'm going to toss out a few [somewhat] random observations --

• What is holding someone back from shooting faster?
  
  
• I think it depends on a number of things, and it might not always be how fast one is pressing the trigger.
  
  
• For example, an instructor once commented, "It's not that I shoot faster than you. I see faster than you." Part of shooting fast is all the stuff that comes before beginning to apply pressure to the trigger: acquiring the target; confirming index on target; the brain recognizing that it's time to fire; and then signalling the trigger to press on the trigger.
  
  
• For some, it's being confident of an adequate index on target -- asking subconsciously "Is it good enough?"
  
  
• And for some, it might be a matter of recoil management -- how long it takes to recover for the next shot.
  
  
• For some, it will be how fast they press the trigger. And I've seen students who can only press the trigger so fast before they start to jerk the trigger -- and jerk the gun off target.
  
  
• And of course if one is looking at speed through a course of fire there's issues with how fast one can move through the course.

 

[bikemutt]

One small thing a friend taught me that's really helped with my trigger control is to use the rest of my shooting hand to "pull" the rifle into my shoulder. Not with a great deal of force, just enough where the axial tension that results seems to allow my trigger finger to operate on it's own, in a more relaxed fashion.

Handguns of course, is another matter.

 

[taliv]

i continue to have a theory

in the HAM radio world, where you used to have to take a morse code test to get a license and the entry level license was something like 5 words per minute and the advanced was something like 20. (i may be misremembering the numbers), there is a general agreement that anyone can learn to do morse at 20+ words per minute.... except for the people that learned morse code at 5 words per minute.

meaning, it's quite difficult to learn some things at one pace and then try to speed it up dramatically. not impossible but takes a lot of effort. but learning something initially at the target pace actually takes less effort even though there are a lot of errors early on.

I believe this is true for all sorts of endeavors. People who learn a language by focusing on syntax and vocabulary rarely do as well as those who are immersed at the speed of normal conversation.

in the shooting world, I believe you can see this in the rogers school method of exposing the targets to n00bs on day one for only a split second. it's like saying, this is what you're expected to do and you will miss a lot while you're learning, but by the end of the week you will get it.


if you take a few key skills at an application level, say, "accuracy" "speed" "moving and shooting", the conventional wisdom is to learn to shoot accurately then to shoot faster and then to do "advanced" things like shooting while moving.

I think that may be prudent on public square ranges, and for people with very limited ammo budgets that never actually expect to become more than marginally competent. But, it's not one-size-fits-all. If you can train in IDPA/3gun bay environment, 1 shooter at a time, then you are not constrained.

But when I teach new shooters (usually informally since I rarely do classes), once we're past the basic sight picture and grip, we start shooting fast, and then work on accuracy by diagnosing misses.

Honestly, anyone can shoot slow well using the 'surprise' break. You can hold the gun with any old sorry grip. etc. It's not until your splits are at least sub .5 sec that you start seeing the flaws in technique. So you may as well diagnose it early instead of forming bad habits while shooting slow.

In both pistol and rifle shooting, I don't know any competitive shooters who are surprised when the gun goes off. I am totally against teaching that as a practical shooting technique.

Think about what you're saying. You're basically saying "you lack the mental control to keep from flinching/jerking the trigger, so if you surprise yourself, the flinch/jerk will happen after the bullet has left the barrel." So with a .15 to .20 split, how would you ever expect the second bullet to even cut cardboard?

So instead of addressing the root cause (mental), we'll cement your bad habit with lots of slow fire practice, making you think you're a great shot. Then when you get excited you'll look like the NYPD, firing 63 rounds and getting 1 hit, probably on a bystander.

My advice to the OP is if you have the facility to do so safely, start by shooting 2 rounds as fast as you can and focus on
- pulling the trigger straight to the rear as fast as you can
- trying to see the front sight just before the second shot
- making changes to your grip/etc until you achieve an acceptable level of accuracy

 

[ATLDave]

Now you're talking my language, Frank. I agree that sight/aim perception, recoil control/recovery, and trigger speed are the 3 primary determinants of splits/consecutive shots on the same target with acceptable hits. Alternatively, we could say that those are the 3 factors that determine the quality of the hits one will get when shooting given split times.

While there's no downside to getting better at any one of those, a shooter looking to make the greatest gains might rationally try to identify which of those 3 is currently their limiting factor. Are they blinking or attentionally blind (eyes open, but brain not processing) for a period of time after the prior shot, and then "coming back to awareness" and having to begin the shot process anew? If so, work on that. Work on seeing the sights through recoil (.22's are awesome for working on this).

Is the shooter aware of the sights and having to wait for the gun to recover from recoil for a long time with their finger itching to pull? Or, alternatively, are they NOT waiting for the gun to recover from recoil and triggering the next shot before the gun is back on target? (IMO, when groups open up as shooting speed increases, this is often what it happening... not so much loss of trigger control.)

Or is the gun back and steady and sights aligned, and the shooter just can't run the trigger fast enough? On a 3-yard, wide-open target this sometimes is the issue. You've got to have awfully good sight awareness and recoil control to have this be the limiting factor on a 10+ yard target!

How do you figure this out? How do you figure out how fast you can shoot? You have to go out and blast a bit. This can be a bit disconcerting if your whole prior shooting career has been about shooting tight groups. Shooting tight groups is AWESOME. It's a critical skill. But to figure out shooting fast, you sometimes have to set that aside temporarily and figure out how to go fast. And then figure out how to control the gun and trigger well enough to keep most or all of that speed and get the groups tightened back up enough to work for whatever purpose you have.

 

[ATLDave]

taliv, I think you're talking sense. I wouldn't necessarily go quite as far as you in saying that learning good slow shooting is an affirmative hinderance (I've just seen too many people manage to dump slow shooting). But a lot of the "fundamentals" that get drilled into people's heads that are helpful or at least non-harmful in slow shooting start to get in the way when the speed is increased. They'll have to make a choice: Ditch the dogma or get stuck.

It's like when someone asked me about breath control in the context of shooting a USPSA stage. Breath control? Dude, what the heck are you talking about? I mean, it's probably best if you breathe. End of advice.