Trigger control and the "surprise" break

[urbantactic]

This is easier in concept as a shooters skill increases, but for newer shooters, occupying the conscious mind to focus on the sights, instead of focusing on the nanosecond the gun fires is a much better thing. As skills increase, this becomes more second nature or a subconscious act.

This is a very good observation. I took my first serious training course this past September from Randy Cain at Cumberland Tactics. As a newer shooter, the surprise break concept has really helped me improve my fundamentals.

[T2C]

1) Our conscious mind, especially for a new shooter can be your enemy here. So once the conscious decision is made to fire the weapon, we should get the conscious mind to start thinking about our sight picture and let our sub-conscious mind go through the trigger pull process until the weapon fires.

2) However we need to learn to train ourselves to not let the conscious mind screw things up.

Your comment about the first concept is on target and very well said.

The second concept is the toughest thing for a firearms instructor to teach and for an experienced shooter to remember.

Well said Surf.

[UrHero]

That's more what I was getting at. It seems that too many people take the idea of the surprise break literally and don't seem to have any concept of what they're really doing. As I mentioned originally, I get the idea behind it, I just think it's used too literally.

[BufordTJustice]

I don't have anything add to what Surf said. Just an awesome post.

I always pulled on my sports background when thinking about trigger pull. You concentrate on the big things while your body, based upon extensive training, autonomously handles the myriad small things. Like throwing a baseball or a football......Or swinging a golf club.

If my fundamentals were so shaky that I had to consciously think about all of the little things regarding my swing or my throwing motion, then i had no business playing in the game.

Without bragging, I don't think about my trigger squeeze/pull in the same way I don't think about throwing the pigskin. As Surf said, the decision to fire is necessarily conscious. The mechanical action should not occupy much, if any, of one's conscious mind.

[echo5whiskey]

When I used to explain this to my first-time/new shooters, I would tell them that you are surprised WHEN the shot breaks, not THAT the shot breaks. And as Surf said, (not that I need to validate it) once you get this programmed into your subconscious, it becomes second nature. This is why repetetive training with YOUR weapon(s) is so important. Once you get this downpat, you pretty much DO know when your shot will break even though you're applying that subconscious, smooth squeeze. Perhaps it is my lack of experiance with a vast array of weapons, but I can definitely see it when I shoot one that I'm not familiar with, and it has a lighter or heavier trigger than mine does.