Posted: 4/7/2007 3:10:46 AM EDT
| Is there a specific technique to it? My second shot always land far away from my first. Am I doing something wrong? Does using a weaver or isosceles stance make a difference? Is there a specific grip I must use? |
| Assuming you have a decent grip (see the Todd Jarrett video at the top of the 1911 forum), the biggest reason for the wide spacing you describe is simply pressing the trigger too hard. Just barely touch the trigger, and don't let your finger come off the trigger between shots. If you have a trigger that requires 4 pounds of pressure to release, then you don't want to apply 6 or 8 pounds of pressure. It's really a question of finding out just how lightly you can touch the trigger and still make the gun fire. Fast, but delicate. It's a double tap, not a double slap. |
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Well, lets define "double tap" first. Do you mean what's commonly called a "hammer" where you fire two shots with one sight picture, as fast as you can possibly pull the trigger? If so, then your shots should not be that far apart because you shouldn't be "hammering" at a range much further than arm's length. Hammering is for CQ situations where the assailant is almost bodily on top of you and you cannot miss, but need to pump out two shots as quickly as possible before the assailant literally runs into you. It can be done from the retention position (speed rock), from a sight picture, or from various "point shooting" positions where you don't really use the sights (probably a few other members will be along shortly to explain why their point shooting technique rocks, and then more members will post up and debunk their techniques, etc). If you are hammering at a range beyond two yards, don't. What you should be doing instead is "controlled pairs". A "controlled pair" is a double-tap delivered slightly slower than a hammer, using the sights for the first shot and then firing again as soon as a "flash" sight picture is acheived. You see the sights for both shots, but the second shot is fired literally just as soon as you see the front sight covering the target. You ARE focusing on the front sight, right? So after the first round is fired, as soon as the front sight goes roughly back to where it was when you fired the first shot, squeeze again. Bang, bang! Not "ba-bang!" If you're waitiing for the front sight to line up with the rear sight in terms of windage and elevation, and waiting until the top of the front sight rests just under the hole you made in the target, then you're doing slow fire. You need to fire the second shot immediately upon seeing the "flash" of the front sight being where its supposed to be, without having any idea of whether the first shot hit where you were aiming or not. Muscle memory is not something to be relied on for accurate shooting unless you are shooting more than 500 rounds a week. Then, yes, its possible. Otherwise, you'll have to rely on strong fundamentals and using a proper sight picture (and a handgun that actually hits where the sights indicate it should!). |
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I also wrote this awhile back during a similar question and saved it as a Word file for just such an occasion. I hope you find it helpful. ***** As far as arms bent/arms straight, my natural inclination is to shoot with arms totally straight and elbows locked. I did this for years. In slow fire I could be accurate that way, but I couldn't shoot quickly with any kind of accuracy. When I learned to maximize the ergonomics of my wrists and elbows, it helped my speed immensely without sacrificing accuracy. Ergonomics is weird stuff, but the gist of the problem is, the pistol deals out "x" amount of recoil with every shot it fires. How fast you can return to your sight picture and fire the next shot depends on how your stance absorbs "x" and allows you to reset back to "zero" for the next shot. The problem with shooting with your arms splayed out is that your wrists will move too much and your elbows too little. You want to minimize the gun's flipping up and down in your hands as you shoot. Your wrists have a range of motion, up and down, which follows the arc of the gun as it muzzle flips after every shot. The more the gun moves your wrists, the longer it will take to reset them to the point where you can acquire your front sight and take another shot. So here's an easy test you can do with another person. Make a fist with both hands and hold them out, thumbs facing upwards, with your arms straight and your wrists straight, and lock them into place as best you can. Have a friend/girlfriend/wife grab your hands and try to rotate them up and down along the vertical range of motion, as if you were holding a gun and the muzzle was trying to flip up. You'll see that even if you are trying your hardest to hold still, they can still wiggle your hands up and down. Switch off and move their hands, see how they can't keep you from rotating their wrists up and down. Try the drill again, keeping your hands the way they were except for one difference. Point your thumbs towards the other person's belt, rotating your hands all the way down in their range of motion until your wrists "bottom out" and it hurts a little to try and go any further. Your hands and wrists should be in the same position they would be in if you had just hit a nail with a hammer. Have your partner try to wriggle your wrists up and down as before, and switch off. Its amazing but the hands will barely move. This is one of those ergonomic secrets, I don't know why it works but it does. If we can put this into practice we can stop our wrists from acting like a hinge and keep the gun from flipping nearly as in our hands, transferring recoil force "x" somewhere else (our elbows!) to be absorbed. So, lets move on to the elbows. With the arms straight out, especially with the elbows locked, any recoil force that gets sent into them doesn't get absorbed, it gets transferred to the next possible fulcrums, which are our shoulders and waist. The next result is that you get pushed back by the recoil until you are leaning backwards without even realizing it, and your arms are being pushed up with every shot because your shoulders are acting like a hinge. Plus the gun is moving around in your wrists alot because they are straight and in the middle of their range of motion. This sucks.  Here is a Youtube video I found of a guy with arms out straight like we've been talking about. He has a USP of some sort. Look how the gun's recoil goes into making his arms move up using his shoulders as a fulcrum. And those are some big arms, he's not a weenie boy. He is shooting slow and probably still not that accuractely. It looks like the gun is trying to jump out of his hands, even with those big Popeye forearms! Its because of his poor technique. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lgGKGvBEv0&mode=related&search= Here's another one of the guy with the same stance shooting a 1911. Look how much the gun flips in his hands, how much his wrists move. He's taking forever between shots and still manages to miss steel targets that are less than 15 yards away. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxZ4DAQ2_p0&mode=related&search= "You like that shit or what?" I guess its all relative, dorkboy. Now, if we bend at the elbows, we can turn our elbows into big shock absorbers which will absorb almost all of our recoil force "x" without transferring it to our shoulders or waist. As a bonus, we can lock our wrists with our hands pointing "downwards" relative to our forearms, and still have our hands holding the gun properly downrange to get a good sight picture. At first doing this, especially the part about the wrists, will definitely feel weird, downright uncomfortable, but you'll notice that the gun is definitely moving around less in your hands! Now the recoil force going backwards towards you is translated into the gun bending your elbows a little, but your elbows can handle this much better than your wrists or your shouders can. They can act like shock absorbers absorbing an amazing amount of recoil, from a little (9mm) to a truly punishing amount (.44 mag and up). You will return back to "zero" for the next shot with much greater ease and consistency, which all adds up to speed.  Now here's a YouTube of Ron Avery, a guy who actually knows what he's doing. Notice the bent arms and locked wrists. He's also shooting a single stack 1911 but notice how different he looks from our last YouTube hero. www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_INu0vT5pc So we can shoot faster with our wrists locked down and elbows bent a little. How does this affect accuracy? Well in a direct sense is probably doesn't help or hurt a whole lot. But indirectly, helping you control felt recoil and giving you a more consistent return to "zero" means less for you to worry about. Now you won't be jerking the trigger in anticipation of recoil. Now you won't get that tingling in your arms from having your elbows locked. Now you have a more solid base that allows you to focus more on your fundamentals: flash sight picture and smooth trigger squeeze. And THAT will add consistency to your groups. |
| Get a good grip. 40% strong hand, 60% support hand. Leave your elbows barely unlocked. Lean forward, not too much, but "progressively agressive" so your 80% of your weight is on the balls of your feet. Acquire a sight picture. Pull the trigger twice, fast. Don't slap it, reset it carefully. With practice you can operate a trigger 5 times a second without releasing it any more than is necessary to reset the trigger. Keep watching the front sight and reacquire a sight picture at the end. Two sight pictures, two shots. Thats a "hammer." With time you will learn to see the front sight through recoil too. Perfect practice will make perfect. I recommend professional training--you won't believe the difference. |
| Also depends on what you are trying to achieve with a double tap. The idea of sending 2 rounds to the same small area is great for competition, but not what you want in a defensive shooting situtation. You actually want some degree of spread to the shots if you are defensive, otherwise the second round will simply be redamaging tissue already damaged by the first round. You'd be far better putting two distinctly separate wound channels in the assailant's body rather than having such a tight pair that they overlap. |
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See Duke's post above. It will also help if you get as high a grip on the gun as possible, while retaining the ability to point it as naturally as possible. This (high grip) will reduce the angle of the recoil relative to your lever (forearm) as much as possible. You can get too high a grip, so work on this. You will feel very uncomfortable with your grip too high, and it will become increasingly more difficult to get a decent, quick sight picture. Lots of practice is required, but you can dry-fire the techniques required to get most of the stuff wired in. (right up to the bang part). Keep in mind, everyone's physiology is a bit different. It may not look 'exactly' the same when you do it, but you want to keep the ideas and objectives in view. It isn't long range rifle shooting. Pain is not required. 
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yeah... I guess that could be an issue if both you and your attacker stood perfectly still like the paper targets do at the range. In the real world the attacker is likely to be moving, if not before you start shooting then certainly after the first shot hits and his body reacts. And if he's "attacking" you then he's either charging at you with a knife or he's shooting at you. Both of those involve at least some movement on his part and either one just -might- cause you to flinch or something to cause movement on your part. That combined with the effects of adrenaline that will be damaging to both trigger control and vision and even the most experienced shooters find that being too accurate is the least of their worries. |