How to stop flinching, see the sights, and quit missing low-and-left

[high country]

Ok ,scratch # 1 & 2
How about this:
Early on I always tried to align the front sight ,rear sight and bullseye perfectly and when I felt they were all lined up perfect, I squeezed the trigger,disaster! Low left and scatted every time.The longer it took me to make sure all three were "lined up" the worse it was.
I learned to just get that front sight quickly on target (while counting backwards) and squeeze off the shot using only the front sight in focus and the rear sight only as a guide, and the target mostly a blur and never take your eyes off of that front sight to look at the target until your done with the exercise.Concentrating on the front sight only on what you want to hit,using muscle memory to count and squeeze the trigger took my mind off of any boom for me. Of course in a defensive situation this is the only option you have.

Thanks ATLDave for posting this. Your experinces, as well as those of many of the other contributors, are very helpful to those of us with a more pronounced reflexive response to a hand held detonation.

What jpy posted describes exactly what I struggle with. I seem to overthink sight alignment, not trusting my brain to find the center of the target. I do it with rifle as well, especially with iron sights. Optics seem to trick my brain a little unless the magnification is so high that I start trying to fight miniscule movements, which does more harm than good. Since I am overly focused on the sights, when I decide they are right and fire, I anticipate the recoil and flich. I have a tendancy jerk the trigger too in haste, but have improved my trigger control quite a bit through dry fire and dummy rounds. I think that moving my focus from the sights and target to the pistol itself, and making sure I watch the gun fire, may be just the ticket (sort of a "you can't flinch, you need to see this happen" as opposed to " trigger pull initiated, your part is done" mental process).

Hard to find time to get to the range these days, but hope to get away for a little while tomorrow with some shorthand notes on some of these thoughts/exercises to give a try.

 

[TikkaShooter]

AFA correcting the missing low and left; this may be of assistance. It isn't perfect because the sights could be incorrect; however, it can be helpful.

 

[ATLDave]

That chart is the source of much confusion. It was intended for one-handed bullseye shooting. It has nothing to do with the gross errors that come with a true blink-involved flinch. And it doesn’t track well with two-handed modern shooting anyway.

For about 98% of people, it’s worse than useless.

 

[spar10]

Great write up!

When I was a kid learning to shoot, we started with a .357 revolver my dad had. He would mix live rounds with empty cartridges to teach me to relax and also to help highlight a flinch if it happened on an empty round. It was good training to help break the reflexive component of a flinch.