2012-08-31 dry fire practice

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 5, shooter’s choice.

Given yesterday’s WHO thoughts, I opted to do the basic routine but emphasizing WHO

1. 20 reps of wall drill from extension WHO
2. 5 reps of wall drill from extension SHO
3. 5 reps of wall drill from extension 2H
4. 20 reps of wall drill from press-out WHO
5. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out SHO
6. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H

I’m not sure I can “ride the rail” of the eye-target line here, at least literally. The gun is coming from a different point, NOT under my right eye. It helps that I’m right eye dominant and right-handed, so naturally they’re all lined up and it is truly just a “ride the rail” press-out. But now with the gun in my left hand, bringing it under my right eye and out doesn’t work so well because the gun is also in my hand at a different angle so the front and rear sights don’t align with the “rail”. So, this is a time where I have to remove the literalness of it all. And doing that helped.

But what really helped?

I know how critical a strong grip is to making this work, especially important in WHO because it is the weak hand. I worked on not just crushing my grip, but really involving the pinky in the crush.

What a difference.

Of course, that shouldn’t surprise me. I know this from my years of martial arts training how critical the pinky is for making grip. But it’s just something that gets lost and doesn’t always happen because it’s not normal (still) for me to grip primarily, if you will, using the pinky. While it makes a good difference in any grip situation, it’s especially important in handgun shooting because of the counter-torque it provides against the recoiling gun.

When I did my SHO and 2H, it was even better because of that.

So there’s something for me to fall back on every now and again: crush with the WHO pinky.