# A Breakthrough!



## RightTurnClyde (Oct 24, 2007)

I finally figured out part of what I was doing wrong. It wasn't my aim, and it wasn't necessarily my trigger squeeze. It was my stinkin' grip! I used to crush the grip with my strong hand and didn't grip very hard with my support hand. Today I relaxed my trigger hand a bit and gripped harder with my support hand. I also started using more isometric pressure (pulling in with my support arm while pushing out slightly with my stong arm.) I'm very happy with the results. As usual, I'm a lefty shooting my S&W M&P 9.

Here's a target with 20 shots as I was figuring things out:










And here's the best 10 shot grouping I've every fired after I was in the zone:


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## TOF (Sep 7, 2006)

You must realy feel that surge of power with that last target.

Congratulations and keep up the good work.

:smt1099


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## Snowman (Jan 2, 2007)

It's always nice when you can figure things out for yourself. Nice shooting. :smt023


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## gmaske (Jan 7, 2008)

Oooooooo!!! VERY PRETTY :smt023


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## DJ Niner (Oct 3, 2006)

Darn good shooting! Keep it up 'til it's reflexive!


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## babs (Nov 30, 2007)

Interesting.. 

(I'm a newb and have been proven to be a terrible shot so just observations from an untrained plebe admittedly. :mrgreen 

Tells me your trigger hand was doing something besides squeezing the trigger when you fired, maybe jerking or pulling the grip in some way.. Which was alleviated by less grip power in that hand.

Pretty cool troubleshooting (no pun intended).. Glad you're driving tacks now. :smt023


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## hawcer (Feb 22, 2008)

> (pulling in with my support arm while pushing out slightly with my stong arm.)


That's great that you figured it out on your own. :smt023
I remember reading how to hold like that in a magazine arcticle a long,long,long time ago...I'm glad I never forgot.

Excellent group btw...


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## longbow (Mar 1, 2008)

Real nice! What distance is this?


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## RightTurnClyde (Oct 24, 2007)

babs said:


> Tells me your trigger hand was doing something besides squeezing the trigger when you fired, maybe jerking or pulling the grip in some way.. Which was alleviated by less grip power in that hand.


Exactly. I finally spotted it while dry-firing at home. While the trigger was breaking, I noticed a small but noticable jerk down and to the right, which is where most of my shots were hitting. So I just experimented with different grips and hand/thumb positions until that jerk went away. So then I started crawling out of my skin for the rest of the week until the weekend when I could finally go to the range and try it out for real. :mrgreen:

Sorry... I forgot to mention the shooting distance. I was just shy of 7 yards for the two groups in the pictures.

Thanks for the encouragement, everybody.


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## babs (Nov 30, 2007)

I'm willing to bet that I'm jerking the pistol all over the place as well after seeing what the groups looked like from someone that knows how to shoot when I was testing that 92FS (3" at 10yds compared to my 6" groups.. embarassing!)


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