Please evaluate my recoil control...

Protege

Regular
EE Expired
Rating - 100%
45   0   0
Hey boys & girls,

Just want some feedback on my recoil control. Went to the range this past friday and took some videos. Been itching to test fire my newly acquired Glock 19. Anyway, after this past session, my experience with handguns sits between 2700-2900 give or take a box of ammo or two. So, take it easy with me. I have a lot more to learn. I only took my G19 and G17 as I wanted to travel light - my walthers had to sit this one out. All videos were shot with the LG G4 in 4k, propped up using a chair and table.

First up - G19 g3 with lonewolf 107mm barrel - Trigger hand side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnW48krUoZE

G19 Support hand side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBb6tVqFyMI

So, what do you think? What am I doing wrong? Where can I improve? How can I improve? Am I applying pressure at the wrong place? I am talking strictly recoil control. Trigger control will be focused later. Just a few things though. 1) If it looks like I'm leaning too far forward, it's because I am flat-footed and I'm making sure that a good portion of my weight is sitting on the balls of my feet. 2) No, my elbows are not extended. 3) I maybe blinking a bit too much, and that's because I nearly got hit in the eye with a hot case when I was warming up. I actually got a video of me getting hit again in the same spot a few hundred rounds later. 4) I've got a few slow-mo vids but when uploaded to youtube, it gets processed as 720p/60fps. Not sure if you want to see that, but I can provide upon request.

Thanks for viewing.

PS: Adding G17 videos in second post. CGN only allows 2 videos per post.
 
Looks fine to me. Do you keep your right thumb lifted up to avoid riding the slide lock?

Thanks. On all videos, for the first two magazines, I was kind of giving the thumbs up to apply pressure on the beavertail with the webbing of my hand. The other times, I'm simply resting my thumb on my support hand. I did install an extended slide lock, but quickly removed it because my thumb would hit it consistently. I'm more worried that my support hand would ride the slide lock - and you'll see me in the vids adjusting to make sure my hand is just below it.
 
I've never had a problem with my weak hand riding the slide lock, but I have cut the slide locks down on all my Glocks to keep my thumb from riding it. I didn't like the goofy grip I had to use to keep my thumb off it.
 
It's very hard to tell from your video, but IMO you likely aren't gripping hard enough with your support hand. The only reason I say this is that in two of your videos I noticed that you re-gripped the pistol with your support hand after about 5-6 rounds. You shouldn't have to do that if you are gripping the gun hard enough. It also looks like you are locking out your elbows (hard to tell, I could be wrong), which doesn't work well for recoil control, at least for me. I like to roll my elbows out and keep them slightly bent.

Also, you are shooting a little too slow to really get a handle on your recoil control. Bill drills (draw and put 6 rounds into an A zone at 7 yards) will tell you a lot about your grip, sight tracking etc. Once you start pushing speed AND accuracy, then you really start to learn about recoil and sight tracking.

But that all doesn't matter unless your groups in the video's above were good. Shoot good groups first, worry about speed later.

Just some constructive feedback based on your vids. Good luck with it!
 

Your weak hand needs to be forward more, its hard on the wrist at first but after a few thousand dry fires it starts to come naturally. Break your wrist over center and apply pressure left to right and right to left. My slide is the only thing that moves now back and forth ,i worked on my hand strength and the vogel grip. Actually my grip is so high that people think the slide is hurting me. Once you master the vogel grip, shooting any other semi auto gun is extremely easy. Your grip is much better than alot of other users, but is too close together like a 1911 grip.
 
the only one thing I noticed in your video, which has nothing to do with recoil control, is your muzzle control.

every time you reloading, during and even with the first round loaded, the muzzle is pointing slightly upwards. Technically, if the gun fires due to mulfunction or anything else, the gun could be pointing to a few different ways.
I am an over paranoid type and always make sure my gun is point 100% level to the ground and down range at ALL TIMES. It's just me.
 
It's very hard to tell from your video, but IMO you likely aren't gripping hard enough with your support hand. The only reason I say this is that in two of your videos I noticed that you re-gripped the pistol with your support hand after about 5-6 rounds. You shouldn't have to do that if you are gripping the gun hard enough. It also looks like you are locking out your elbows (hard to tell, I could be wrong), which doesn't work well for recoil control, at least for me. I like to roll my elbows out and keep them slightly bent.

Also, you are shooting a little too slow to really get a handle on your recoil control. Bill drills (draw and put 6 rounds into an A zone at 7 yards) will tell you a lot about your grip, sight tracking etc. Once you start pushing speed AND accuracy, then you really start to learn about recoil and sight tracking.

But that all doesn't matter unless your groups in the video's above were good. Shoot good groups first, worry about speed later.

Just some constructive feedback based on your vids. Good luck with it!

Thanks for the feedback. My support hand has a problem keeping contact with my trigger hand, not so much the gun. Also my elbows are not straight and locked. It looks like it but it's not. As for speed, i think it's one of my g19 vids you see me empty a mag the fastest. That's about as a fast i can go at the moment while still maintaining proper sight alignment and be within a 2-3" group. Any faster and I'd be in danger of hitting the ceiling. It's going to take practice of course.
 

Your weak hand needs to be forward more, its hard on the wrist at first but after a few thousand dry fires it starts to come naturally. Break your wrist over center and apply pressure left to right and right to left. My slide is the only thing that moves now back and forth ,i worked on my hand strength and the vogel grip. Actually my grip is so high that people think the slide is hurting me. Once you master the vogel grip, shooting any other semi auto gun is extremely easy. Your grip is much better than alot of other users, but is too close together like a 1911 grip.

Thanks for the feedback. I did the vogel grip back in july and i did not like it. Granted i did not do it with a glock. I did try doing the over roll thing with the support wrist but ended up riding the slide lock a lot. So as you can see in my current videos i backed off a bit. I have no problem revisiting this technique as it obviously works. However the big thing i found about it is it requires huge amounts of grip strength. Vogel - i think - is at or more than 200lbs of grip force. I am around 120-130lbs.
 
the only one thing I noticed in your video, which has nothing to do with recoil control, is your muzzle control.

every time you reloading, during and even with the first round loaded, the muzzle is pointing slightly upwards. Technically, if the gun fires due to mulfunction or anything else, the gun could be pointing to a few different ways.
I am an over paranoid type and always make sure my gun is point 100% level to the ground and down range at ALL TIMES. It's just me.

Thanks. I knew I'm going to get some flak about that. Rest assured it will be corrected next time.
 
From the video your grip looks good. The left wrist could perhaps use a little more angle but it's not far off at all. When you place the fleshy heel of your support hand into the gap along the left side be sure you get it firmly against your fingernails of the strong hand. I could be wrong but it seems like your left hand might be back a little. But with larger hands on a smaller fitting grip what you show is pretty normal. But just check it for yourself. The goal being that the more forward you get the heel of your hand while still filling the gap well and achieving good contact with the left side of the grip scale the more finger length you have to wrap around your strong hand fingers. Also the easier it is to get a nice strong hand contact and support to the back strap.

When I hold a gun that doesn't fit me that well I tend to err on the side of a better strong hand grip and fit my support hand as well as it can in the resulting gap. If I ease up on the back strap to favor the weak hand support the gun tends to move more in my grip. So if I have to give anything up I give up a little of that left side fleshy heel fill in favor of the back strap.

For the most part your muzzle control during reloading wasn't bad. But a tighter control over the muzzle direction during handling is never a bad thing. I've seen a couple of stage DQ's by folks with less than ideal muzzle control which was OK when facing downrange but they broke the 180 rule due to reloading on the run while moving across a stage due to the angled hold of the empty gun. So work on the good habits now before you get bitten later. I know that working the gun up in your "workspace" is popular and this requires an angle to the side and a slight raising of the muzzle to avoid a very unnatural wrist angle. But you can learn to do that without the muzzle being directed to the side. Instead it's pointed up but directly ahead with the gun ROLLED instead of turned to the side to get a better shot for the mag into the well. That way the gun is always pointed ahead in line with your torso instead of off to one side.

Now you call it "recoil management". But in reality there never should be any effort put into trying to fight the recoil. If you do it'll never be timed correctly and the result is known as a "flinch". But what I did see, near as I could tell, was a proper "dead hold" where you are not fighting the gun so there's no signs I could see of any flinch. And that's as it should be.

Instead I see a well supported gun held deep in the grip so the recoil doesn't kick up the wrists overly much. I saw turned out and slightly broken elbows which tends to let the recoil push the hands directly back instead of up and which just kicks the elbows out a little with each shot. Were you holding the elbows out enough? That's for you to feel since you want them turned out but not to the point where it feels strained. But from what I saw it looked pretty good.

And the results show. The gun tended to recoil mostly directly back with only a minimal flip. Is it perfect? Probably not. We can always do better. But I'd say you're well on the way. And certainly any changes you do need to make at this point are not glaringly obvious where they are easily seen in a video other than perhaps working the grip to give a slightly better support to the back strap. In particular watch for the support hand pushing back your strong hand thumb and reducing that upper back strap contact pressure.
 
Make sure you're following the front sight after the break, this allows the next shot to leave as the sights arrive, not waiting for you to get the sights and then letting it leave. Even with mediocre recoil control (like mine) you can get hits down to around .23 dwell time.
 
I could not really tell how firm your grip were in the vid. The right hand grip should mitigate muzzle flip and left hand support the right hand and mitigate muzzle from moving left and right. The ORA CQB clinic had one day dedicated to pistol and this is what I took away. The right hand should be like a clamp; 3 fingers are pulling back the pistol grip against the palm tight enough at a point before your hand would begin to shake. The left hand, where the fingers meet the palm should be right on top of your right hand folded fingers. Left thumb rests on the lower and right thumb on your left thumb. There were a lot of aha moments at the range that day.
 
I think its fine, everything BCRider said is bang on. Good lock on in the writs and let the muzzle track well. Careful your finger on the trigger in low ready and off target in general. Looking good.
 
Recoil control looks good, I'd be tightening the strong side thumb down onto the support hand though. And squeezing more with the support hand like Clob says. Your muzzle control is fine, unless the range has a rule about it. My muzzle is at least at 45 degree angle during reloads, unless I'm at certain ranges in certain countries.
 
Back
Top Bottom