You are not focused on the Front Sight Post. You are letting your mind become distracted with everything around you. The Rear Sight. The Target. What others are doing. You are not holding a razor sharp focus on that front sight post.
Your trigger pull is less than optimal. You are not pulling it straight back. You’re jerking it. You’re trigger pull is yanking the front sight off the target.
We don’t like being told we are doing something wrong. We hate that and we will argue against it. Pride. Our pride gets in our own way here. Stubbornness… refusal to change the way you are doing something even if it’s not working, we’ll just keep trying what we’ve been doing until we run out of ammo.
Only YOU know what your sight picture looked like the instant your shot broke. Only YOU know what that trigger pull felt like. Only YOU know what you did wrong. YOU have to be honest with yourself. If you want to get better, you have to start with your own internal honesty here. Put down the pride, and admit to yourself you are not doing everything you need to be doing to achieve consistent accuracy.
Front Sight Focus – Trigger Pull.
Those 2 things. You get those two things right – everything else falls into place and you’ll have tighter shot groups.
This also applies to rifle shooting as well.
I would like to add that a proper grip will get you a long way in the quest to pistol shooting. I’ve seen some absolutely horrible gripping “techniques” and with even focusing on the front sight still wouldn’t produce improved results. Lastly training scars can be the biggest block in pistol shooting.
I’m not saying those are not important. But even if you have a good grip – It’s ruined if you don’t have these two factors under control.
I would have to say that a failure in any of the 3 factors will result in poor groups. IMO all 3 have to be in harmony for success.
Correct, learning how to run the trigger without moving the sights is the key to getting better. A dry fire technique of placing a dime on your front sight and pressing the trigger and keeping the dime in place really helps and gives you instant feedback…if the dime falls that’s a shot that would be a flyer. Those who become excellent shooters invest time and effort in dry fire every day.
Sight alinement and trigger control. The two things my Bullseye coach pounded on constantly. The third he ragged on was breathing, but sights and trigger were (are) paramount. Those basics cover all the sports, as well as defence.
It’s all sight alignment and trigger control. Once you’ve mastered those two fundamentals everything else falls into place.
I’d add in one more qualifier there. As we are both familiar with eye injuries some eyes just don’t work well enough to get hits out at 25/30/50 yds with iron sights. This can be solved with a swap to a micro optic and has extended many older USPSA shooters careers.
We’re talking basic fundamental stuff here. But yes, the new mini red dots do help. But they still can’t compensate for a crap trigger pull.
A lot of good shooting has occurred with some “different” grip techniques, but that sight picture and trigger squeeze are what makes it go.
But, I’m finding that with the older eyes, if I go ahead and shoot I do a lot better than when I fish around for that textbook sight picture every single time.