Fundamental; accepting your hold.

Today I was function firing a 38 spl build. Shot 100 rds short line then put up a SF target at 50. Shot for group and then adjusted sights. Shot this target. 99-1
I’ve hardly been shooting. Was wobbling and hold was mediocre.
’I accepted my hold’ and made good trigger squeeze a priority. This is a perfect example of ‘accepting’ your hold and following the fundamentals process. 
Let this be motivational in knowing that the fundamentals work if you let/follow them.
Accepting your hold is supposed to help you pull the trigger, but unfortunately most look from the other side and it inhibits their good trigger squeeze.
Fundamentals are there for a reason. 
Jon

Pretty close to 100-1, what load and barrel are you using?

Great note!

Rodger Barthlow wrote:Pretty close to 100-1, what load and barrel are you using?

2.7 BE 148 Magnus HBWC loaded on Star
KKM 1-10 barrel.

38spl is a challenging long line gun, nice shooting!

Jon Eulette wrote:2.7 BE 148 Magnus HBWC loaded on Star
KKM 1-10 barrel.

Thanks for the advice...still learning but I find I can get good (but not that good!) results using the same process. My issue is that I don't have a consistent "smooth" trigger pull and I start worrying about how fast or how slow I move the trigger backwards. 

Out of curiosity, what sort of MV and group size will you get with that load?

I haven’t chronographed load. I should, have a Labradar….probably around 720ish.
In many pistols this load has shot 1.5” groups. Good crimp is important.

If you are concerned about your trigger squeeze speed, you should be training different speeds during dry firing and then do it live firing. When you walk up to the line you cannot be concerned….
Pull trigger with purpose. Have a plan. Be confident in your trigger squeeze. Confidence comes from doing. Dry fire; do it. Live fire; do what you dry fired. Dry fire teaches and live fire reinforces what you learned. 

Hold is what spoils the best plans. You train and hold is pretty good. On match day your hold might be substandard. So typically that extra movement gets in your head. Trigger control goes to hell. It’s because you are scared to pull the trigger because the extra arm movement. You are inhibiting trigger movement. We try to get hold better and are not squeezing the trigger. Then we hold too long and either droop low or yank the shot.

Plan should be accept hold, and squeeze the trigger smoothly/continuously until the shot breaks. Very simple! Shoot your hold. If you’re barely holding black, all shots will fall within the black with a good trigger squeeze. Just because holding black doesn’t mean all shots are extremely out in 8 ring. You will shoot 9’s and 10’s. ACCEPT YOUR HOLD! I proved it works:)

My grammar isn’t directed at anyone, just words on paper so to speak.
Focus on positive and keep trigger moving.
Jon

Jon, accepting my hold used to scare me, I did the same thing you describe in the 3rd paragraph above. I would search for that moment and bench the pistol many times in slow fire, I now realize more times than I needed to.
 It was you or someone else here that said not much difference in trigger pull between slow or sustained. Which helped my thinking on the trigger, it's the basics and all that led into it that I needed training with. I've improved more this year, but haven't shot much for matches, that mental part really shows. Maybe our indoor league will help, with those 50" targets I'll have to get after it, they can be tough if I let them.
 By the way did you shoot that target with irons? How many clicks of elevation was the difference between short and long?
 Thanks, Stan

Aimpoint H1. Clicks…..don’t remember, made a zero change. I think with Aimpoints I’m around 8-10 clicks.

Jon, if I'm hearing you right, you're saying to not "fine tune" the center of the black, but instead focus only on trigger?

What I’m saying is shoot the true fundamental of accepting your hold. Accept the amount of wobble and continuously squeeze the trigger. When attempting to make hold prettier or waiting for a more stable hold you are inhibiting trigger squeeze or interrupting trigger squeezing process. Typically results are less than favorable. Scenario is typically settle, settle, settle, yank trigger (force shot). Wrong scenario!
Fundamentally we lift, lower, settle (accept hold) , squeeze trigger, shoot shot, lower. No where in the fundamentals does it say make hold prettier and prettier then shoot. Accepting hold is crucial mentally and physically to good continuous trigger squeeze.
Jon

Isn't the Magnus 148gr HBWC made by Zero and rebranded or am I mistaken?
Break open a jug of WST and try Jerry Keffer's load of 2.8grs, you might be surprised with a smaller group.

I believe that’s correct on bullet manufacturing.
I’ve shot WST and haven’t found any difference. I’m shooting the same with either load.
Jon

To amplify and illustrate Jon's point, please consider the two targets below. I shot both in a Short Course match yesterday. One is (obviously) a Slow Fire B-16 target and the other is a Timed Fire B-8 target. To provide visual aid, I have superimposed correctly scaled B-16 rings from X to 8 onto the Timed Fire target and the B-8 10 ring onto the Slow Fire target.

Now, I KNOW that currently my hold is about the size of a 9-ring on a Slow Fire target. Looking at the B-16 target, it is clear that for 4 of the 10 shots, I did NOT simply accept my hold but was trying to shoot "pretty 10's" with the predictable result of snatching the shots. These 4 wide shots have fallen outside the size of the group on the Timed Fire target, despite the fact that I had all the time in the world. It is also clear that I shot 6 of the 10 shots correctly, focusing on the trigger and accepting my hold. And these 6 shots felt very easy to shoot, just as they should.

Now let's look at the Timed Fire target. For some time now, I have been training to shoot Timed and Rapid fire at Rapid Fire cadence and my performance in Sustained Fire has improved significantly, mainly as the result of better Rapid Fire scores. So, the point I am trying make is that I shot this Timed Fire target at Rapid Fire cadence, which means that I had NO TIME to think of shooting "pretty 10's" but have simply accepted my hold, focused on the correct shot recovery and trigger operation. As you can see, shooting individual shots in this manner during Slow Fire, would have yielded a significantly better result.

A word of caution: IN NO WAY I am trying to advocate shooting Slow Fire strings at Rapid Fire cadence. When I was analyzing my match performance this morning, it struck me that the path to better performance in Slow Fire lies in the direction of accepting my hold and focusing on the trigger. And then, I saw Jon's post and this entire topic, so I decided to add my $0.02.

Best Regards,
Oleg.

Shooting well is easy, shooting poorly is hard work. 

NTT at Perry this year, in pouring rain. I never opened my box. My team mate was pegging me hard so I shot multiple shots between his.  Finished SF in 2 minutes with a 79 with a miss. Put it up and shoot within a few seconds, trust hold and recovery, repeat without putting it down

This made a BIG difference in my shooting yesterday. I'm very new to the sport. I'm still learning and have exactly the problem described here. 

My hold is sometimes pretty stable, but other times I get a lot of wobble. In any case I've recognized that I tend to try to pull the trigger at the "best" time, when my sights are in the right area. I'm more focused on where the sights are on the target and trying to pull the trigger when they are in the right spot. I know this is completely wrong. I know that the sight alignment is way more important, and that I should pull the trigger slowly and smoothly and not try to time when I'm pulling it. 

So I made a big effort to focus just on this yesterday at the range. I tried to think only about keeping the sights aligned and not be to concerned about the movement of them on the target. I also thought solely about keeping the sights aligned while pulling the trigger. 

I kinda hit on something that for me made the difference for me. I started just thinking to myself "Keep the sights aligned and slowly pull the trigger" for every shot. This helped me change my focus from where the sights were on the target, to just thinking about keeping them aligned. Because I was focused on the alignment, I was able to ignore the movement of the gun and not try to "time" my trigger pull. 

Anyway, it is a subtly different way of thinking about it, but it really helped me. I still found myself trying to time my trigger pull, but at least I recognized when I did it and I can keep practicing to eliminate this.

Jon taught us this in a clinic a few years back. I still re-read this several times, as it never hurts to hear it again and reinforce it. Jon is a phenomenal teacher/coach, everyone at the clinic got a lot out of it and he comes highly recommended.

Jon Eulette wrote:2.7 BE 148 Magnus HBWC loaded on Star
KKM 1-10 barrel.

Jon,

Do you have a SKU number for that particular KKM 1-10 barrel? 

Bill

No sir, special order

Have you found that a 1-10 twist to be more accurate?  I ask because twist formulas indicate that 1-16 the bullets are “overspun”.   Over spinning can lead to hollow groups.

Clark used Douglas 1:10 twist blanks on his two-piece 38 special barrels for his long slides. They have always shot exceptionally well using Federal match. I've built many Kart 1:16 twist barrels in 38 and they have shot well. I just use 1:10 mostly because I can. I prefer KKM because I can have them machined to my specifications. 
Jon

The discussion of accepting hold has always fascinated me. My experience of  "settle" (accept hold) is ... hold the dot centered or same place within the field of view and move into the black... allow dot movement arc to reduce and slow...as i build pressure on the trigger...as dot moves from widest point of arc back toward center...complete smooth pressure build on the trigger until stop is felt.   Accepting hold to me is some days the arc movement is slow and some days the movement is faster. On very poor days, the movement is a jitter and the only thing I can do is be as smooth on the trigger as possible. The nice thing is you can still shoot a decent group with a considerable jitter in your hold.

And committing to pulling the trigger smoothly and increasingly in spite of what you see…no stop and start, no restart. Continuous from start to finish

'And committing to pulling the trigger smoothly and increasingly in spite of what you see…no stop and start, no restart. Continuous from start to finish"

Hmmmm. Except when you make the decision to abort!

Aren’t “stop and start” and “restart” the opposite of aborting?