Learning the Trigger: A Journey

 

There is an aphorism attributed to Bruce Lee, regarding the stages of learning:

1.       A punch is just a punch.

2.       A punch is no longer a punch.

3.       A punch is just a punch.

I do not consider myself a master of either the punch or the trigger, but I do have some observations that I took away from my journey into trying to run the gun.

My first pistol was a Glock 17, second generation. If you do the math you’ll realize that I’m dating myself here. My observations are somewhat specific to Glocks, but also to any pistol with a trigger that has any sort of tactile take-up, break, and reset.

When I first shot that pistol, my ability was quite clearly in the meme category, i.e. “trigger make gun go bang, hurrr.” I had no idea what was going on beyond loading the gun, aiming, and pressing the trigger until the gun was empty. Along the way I stumbled into the fact that if I was slow and deliberate with the trigger, my accuracy was much greater! I will also not attribute any great intelligence or discovery to me, by the way, let me get that out of the way.

At some point when I got more serious about shooting, I read a lengthy thread on Glock Talk. Just now I brought up that site and see that it is still in existence. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad about that but let me say that at some point there was some decent information there. Perhaps there still is, but I fear to tread on that ground.

Anyway, that thread talked a lot about all the nuances of the Glock trigger. It talked about take-up, initial resistance, pressing into that and encountering yet more slack/resistance, trigger break, over travel, and trigger reset. I was enraptured, and quickly set out to hit the range and play with all of those parts of the trigger press.

What I quickly discovered was that shooting from the reset was easier and typically more accurate than pressing completely through the trigger each time. After some serious rounds downrange with my newly found knowledge, I became quite accurate. I was proud of my accuracy and as many of my friends can attest, I was quite good at target shooting.

Then, of course, in my evolution, I started shooting competition. I was the most accurate competition shooter around. I was also definitely the slowest. Having stage times that can be measured on a sundial is no way to do well in that venue. I tried a lot of things to get better/faster. I would ride the reset between target transitions. I switched out my trigger to a very light trigger. One friend told me that I better not sneeze while my finger was near the trigger. I think he called it the “achoo-bang” trigger. Between that trigger and riding the reset, I sent more than one errant round downrange while either not on target or not where I wanted to put the bullet. Obviously my strategy wasn’t giving me the greatest results.

One of the earlier side effects of obsessing on the reset was pinning and creeping. Having to have the trigger hit the reset perfectly every time requires a much more delicate forward motion of the trigger. One of the other possible side effects of the reset obsession is that “click-bang” that some get into, where they think that the reset is their signal to fire, rather than all of the other conditions needing to be met. And while they may think that click-bang means they won’t experience anticipation, my experience watching shooters tells me otherwise…

One instructor told me that I should move the trigger forward at the same speed that I pressed it rearward. That seemed to help but still did not net me the results I wanted. It did give me more speed, but not the kind of splits I was hoping to get.

Then there was an interlude in my life. A change of work forced me to shoot a Sig P226 in traditional double action format. I hated that gun, it was a pig, it was a boat anchor, but it forced me to do a few things. Firstly, it forced me to be somewhat visually patient with the first trigger press, given the 12 pound first double action pull. And secondly it forced me to reset fast, or at least come forward faster, due to the second and subsequent trigger presses. At some point I realized that you can reset the trigger in a hurry. Like while the gun is going bang kind of hurry. My splits got low and my accuracy was still quite good.

After much work, much trial and error, and much instruction, I understand what to do, or not to do with all of those parts of the trigger. Interestingly at this point I don’t think about them overly much, but I can always slow down and use the parts of the trigger press that help me at any given point. (Accuracy over longer distances, such as 50 or 100 yard pistol shooting would definitely be one of them.)

So I don’t know if any of this has been useful to you or not. I do think that I might have regressed some now, because mostly I just hold the gun on target and “press trigger gun go bang.” But it took me a long while to get there.