By George Emanuel
All of us at one time or another are going to develop a flinch. The insidious thing about a flinch is that we may not be able to recognize it during our regular practice regime.
They typically manifest themselves by being low and left hits, (really misses) on our target. (Low and right for you wrong handed people out there in the shooterverse)
They may also be hidden among other faults as well, such as milking the gun, (not holding the gun properly, which also causes misfeeds) or jerking the trigger. (Jerking is Ok in fishing where we have a jerk on one end of the line waiting for a jerk on the other) Suffice it to say in shooting this has a deleterious effect on our performance. Severe The Live and Dry Drill can be effective in helping to overcome a flinch, and can even diagnose a severe problem. It sometimes reveals itself by the shutting of the eyes as the gun goes bang, or in obvious anticipation of it doing so.
But it is the very sneaky flinch which can be difficult to catch.
We must first understand what causes a flinch. This is really easy. A flinch is your body’s natural reaction to a loud noise or violent movement.
The movement we can mitigate with a proper grip. The noise however is a different animal which even hearing protection does not counteract completely. Your body simply disconnects and reacts all on its own and quite independent of your conscious state. The flinch dwells in the very difficult to reach subconscious. Flinching is the result of stress transmitted by the neural pathways of the brain and nerves and muscles of the body. This is all done in the subconscious. It is part of the baked in “flight or fight” response.
Watch anyone, or better yet a whole group when a sudden loud noise is heard. They immediately tense up into a frightened posture as a natural response to what the primeval brain reacts to as danger.
This same phenomena has effectively told your brain to anticipate the shot and to flinch in reaction to that stimulus.
Do you close your eyes as the shot breaks? If you can’t see it, you can’t hit it!
We can train the subconscious to resist the flinch reaction with a simple drill which at once diagnoses the flinch and promotes a remedy at the same time. Kind of a twofer if you will.
You cannot use a gun with a magazine disconnect for this drill. I hope you don’t carry such a pistol, but that is for another time.
Empty and clear your gun Load five rounds into your magazine Insert the magazine and rack the slide, set the safety on if so equipped, and remove the magazine You now have your pistol loaded with a single round only and no magazine from which to strip a second shot. Bring the gun into your line of sight turning off the safety (as a fluid part of presentation) if equipped, and fire the shot ensuring that you hold the trigger to the rear until your sights have settled back on the target. You are now going to reset the trigger (we will learn another trigger reset method in another article) and pay careful attention to your sights as you press the trigger until the shot breaks. As you heard and felt the “click” what did your sights do. Was the alignment correct throughout and did you maintain a good sight picture with no movement? Or, did the muzzle drop? If it dropped you just found that elusive flinch you might not have seen otherwise. Now for the next part of the drill. Conditioning your subconscious. you are going to repeat the above with the remaining rounds in your prepped magazine. With each press of the trigger, both live and dry fire, you are going to concentrate on not flinching. Repeat this with a second magazine if necessary. If the flinch has stopped continue with your practice session, if not you can continue loading magazines and going through this drill, or you can go home and dry fire. Dry firing at home is much preferred over continuing live fire. Your mind doesn’t know nor care that every other shot is live or dry, your concentration is training it to act the same in either case. It is just as simple as it sounds, don’t complicate or overthink it! There is no sense in trying to practice other skills with a known flinch. Yes, it is a PITA, but you need to get rid of it first. Like most problems, they must be diagnosed in order, and repaired when found. Don’t change multiple things at once or you may never know which was the true problem. It’s no different with shooting, one thing at a time added skill on skill to the best of your ability until you have reached your potential. At home you can continue to train your brain with dry fire, just remember to concentrate on not flinching just as you did at the range with each press of the trigger. Fixing a well-entrenched flinch is not hard, but it can take considerable time dry firing to build the primal reaction to eliminate it. Dry fire ten minutes a day for a month, then head back to the range.
Before heading for the range take a few “dummy” rounds and mix them into your magazines for your warm up. You may be surprised that you still flinch occaisionaly, which is the purpose. It also is an indicator that more work is necessary. (or it could also indicate that you just don’t follow directions very well, and haven’t practiced!)
Good Luck, and remember: “A gun fight is no place for an “oops”.”