I just got a new Glock26, it is the first handgun I have owned, and I really suck with it. I have done 4 range sessions with it, resulting in around 800 rounds fired. I am getting frustrated, and feel that I am now just wasting ammo. Pretty much every shot, I am getting a few more hitting where I am aiming, is a few inches to left, I would say around 3-4 inches of POA.
I have practiced proper sight alignment, proper finger placement on the trigger, and try to have a consistent trigger pull.
I am guessing I am failing at:
Trigger Pull
Anticipating Recoil
I forgot to bring my dummy rounds to the range today, though I am going to use those in a drill with live rounds to catch my flinching. I had a round that did not fire today, and noticed I flinched, bringing the gun downwards, and I am guessing to the left as well. Though, when firing I never shoot low, just left.
Any tips, or other ways to diagnose my problem? Is cross-eye dominance causing this issue?
Try closing your left eye and shoot with just the right and see where your hits are. I was messing around with this very thing yesterday by dry firing with my off hand and seeing where the sights are when looking through one eye at a time. I know you’re supposed to shoot both eyes open but some find it hard to line up the sights when the gun does not run straight down the dominate arm with the dominate eye. Head turns one side or the other so the dominate eye can get behind the sights.
Try shooting left handed with your right eye closed and see if that changes the POI. Shooting with the support hand forces you to pay closer attention to the basics. Also try dry firing at a blank wall and pay attention to front sight shift when the trigger breaks. If the sight consistently moves to the left when you dry fire with the right hand, place your trigger finger farther in on the trigger. I shoot with the crease of the distal joint almost touching the right side of the trigger on handguns with 5 lb. and heavier trigger pull weights and it may be worth trying.
A good thing to do while dry firing at home is dime drills. It helps improve trigger skills and front sight focus. Perform dime drills until you can do it ten times in a row without the dime falling off the top of the front sight. To this day, I still dry fire 10 minutes a day and it really helps reinforce the basics.
I am right handed and left eye dominant. A lot of my pistols have the rear sight adjusted to the right to compensate for shooting with my right eye. Once you can shoot small shot groups at ten yards with most shots touching, and you notice the shot groups are still going left, you will have to make a sight adjustment.
Thanks for the tips. But, do you mean you move your sights to right to help compensate for the cross eye dominance? Do you still use your left eye as the dominate eye?
Even shooting with both eyes open I get pretty much the same results, though I do need to shoot that way more.
Put more finger on the trigger. When I shoot double stack pistols I have to put my finger almost to the first joint to get the pistol to not hit to the left . Something to try.
7-10yds. I have shot a little farther, the results were the same, to the left but with larger groups. I can shoot at two yards and the shots will still be left. At least I am consistent, my groups are not scattered.
When dry firing the front sight does not move. I believe that will change though, when I actually expect the gun to fire and try to compensate for recoil. I am interested in what the dummy round drills will expose.
Shooting right handed, I close my left eye and zero with my right eye at 25 yards. This is to facilitate a 25 yard head shot. Then I shoot with both eyes open at 10 yards and closer to verify zero. You want to make sure your nose is behind the rear sight when zeroing with both eyes open, so the dominant eye is the controlling factor.
Before changing rear sight windage you want to be able to consistently shoot tight groups. For a lot of right handed shooters just moving the trigger finger farther in on the trigger will bring POI to the right. Ideally, the distal phalange and the proximal phalange will be at a right angle to each other when the trigger is pressed to the rear. If you are shooting low left, I would work on dime drills first.
Try this and see if it helps. When teaching a pistol class one of the drills I like to have people do is exaggerate trigger finger placement and shoot in order to mentally reinforce what will happen if you have an imperfect grip/trigger finger placement on a handgun when presenting it to the target from the holster. I ask them to place the tip of the finger on the trigger and fire ten shots at a quick pace, then place the crease of the distal joint of the trigger finger on the trigger and fire another ten shots. If you shoot the drill honestly at a distance of 10 yards, you should see a shift in POI.
Another drill we do is to shoot with both eyes open at 10 yards while rotating the head to different positions. First the nose is indexed behind the rear sight and we fire ten shots. Second the head is rotated to the right with the left eye indexed behind the rear sight and we fire ten shots. Third the head is rotated to the left with the right eye indexed behind the rear sight and we fire ten shots. You should see some shift in POI when moving from the dominant eye to the non-dominant eye. The drill is designed to show you what will occur if your head is rotated one way or the other while engaging targets.
Good luck. If you keep working at it, the light bulb will go off and you can start working on technique at the next level.
According to (the late) Louis Awerbuck, shooting left is a relatively common problem with Glocks. I’ve taken 2 pistol courses from Louis. He started every course asking if anyone with Glocks is shooting left and then spent a fair amount of range time before the course starts working with each person. He developed this chart, maybe it can help you.
THIS… Will solve your problem normaly. After going to glock 8 months ago i contacted a trainer friend becouse of this. Since i was shooting .45 (1911) for so many years i would just use the pad or tip of my finger like a rifle almost,my buddy told me to stop shooting it like a .45 and to insert more trigger finger. It stopped immediately. He said it happens alot with new glock shooters. Just hang in there you will get it,i did.
I refused to buy a glock becouse when they were new many many years ago a friend bought one and it wouldnt fire. You could pull the trigger till it hurt and nothing,once you let it go and pulled again it would fire. Not good for a duty weapon. But iam so glad my friend talked me into buying one,ive loved it, its trully the ak47 of pistols. My friend has one with a logged 120,000 rounds through it. It was his loaner g19 when he tought classes and has been through a ton of high round count classes.
Learning to shoot a handgun with a subcompact can be a very steep learning curve. A larger handgun will help you obtain a full grip on the weapon which is critical. Plus a larger/ heavier pistol will help mitigate perceived recoil, which causes alot of problems in and of itself.
Also I would recommend learning how to properly grip the pistol. In my experience, when a proper grip is obtained, the trigger finger will naturally fall where it needs to be. Then learn proper trigger manipulation, which again, in my opinion, is the most important fundamental skill for shooting a handgun well.
It’s sort of a futile exercise to diagnose shooting issues without observing the shooter whilst shooting, and seeing the results down range.
If you want to fix the issue, you should seek out someone who knows what they are doing, and have them observe when you go to the range.
Well the wife just bought a glock 27 off a coworker for her concealed carry. Let her shoot some lighter reloads I made for her to use in matches and she did alright with the occasional shot low left. Threw in some winchester ranger rounds we use for work and the added recoil had her anticipating horribly. I know the smaller glocks are snappy with factory loads and I have helped fellow coworkers get to shooting down the middle just by hand and finger placement. Grip should be high on the gun with support hand filling in all the gaps. No gun grip frame showing from the outside. Play with finger placement on the trigger to narrow down where the rounds will end up. More finger or less will help to keep the gun from moving around too much during the trigger pull.
Do you put the index finger of your support hand in front of the trigger guard or below it. I found I tend to pull left with my finger in front of the trigger guard with my G 19.
I have been dry firing daily, and have done a few range sessions since starting this thread. I also started putting snap caps in the mags mixed with live rounds to catch my flinches, and I have been working on stopping that.
I ended up moving my rear sight to the right and that instantly helped. The biggest thing, besides cleaning up my fundamentals, is making sure turn my head slightly to the right, and that gives me a perfect sight picture.
At about 7 yards, from the draw, I can shoot pretty much as fast as I can at the moment, and get all hits on my 6" bullseye. For me, that is good considering my poor shooting before. Once I get to 10 yards and beyond, however, my sloppy fundamentals are shown. Today it was mostly shooting a bit high.
Thanks for the help everyone. I will continue to train and sharpen everything up. I plan on taking some local classes as well.
