How to stop flinching when shooting: catch it, then train it out

How to stop flinching when shooting, step by step:

1. Prove it first. On an empty chamber or a dummy round, a flinch shows as a gun that moves with nothing to move it.
2. Dry fire often, and on the range mix in a live shot now and then, so that pressing the trigger stops meaning a bang.
3. Take away what feeds it: good ear protection, a smaller calibre or an airgun for a while, and rest before you tire.
4. Watch the front sight, dot or reticle right through the shot; a flinch often shuts the eyes.
5. Follow the same routine for every shot, and expect it to take months.

Flinching is an involuntary movement made before the shot has left the gun, in expectation of its noise and recoil. Jo Deering, writing for NRA Women, describes an erratic movement, usually of the finger, arm, head or whole torso, as you work the trigger, mostly from anticipation: the brain knows a loud noise and some recoil are coming, and reacts before they have happened.

Timing is the trouble. Reacting to recoil as it came would do no harm, writes Paul Schoch, who teaches combat pistol to special operations units and police, in Shooting Illustrated; but human reactions are not that quick, so we often tense before it, and the slightest tension before the bullet leaves the barrel moves the sights.

The two are easy to confuse, and often come together. The pistol training guide of the US Army Marksmanship Unit (USAMU) describes both in one paragraph. First the jerk: a sudden press forced through in the fleeting instant the sights look right, with muscles beyond the trigger finger joining in. Then the young shooter who, in anticipation of the pistol’s recoil and loud noise, strains his muscles by flinching; this, the guide says, is “also known as heeling the shot”.

Brian Zins, 12 times the NRA’s national pistol champion, goes further. Writing in Shooting Sports USA, an NRA journal, he calls jerking, heeling and flinching all forms of anticipation, behind practically every bad shot that was not a grip or position problem. The press itself is in Trigger control; this post is about the bracing.

Recoil can hide it: with the pistol moving in the recoil, the USAMU guide notes, a shooter often does not realise he is blinking or straining his arm and shoulder. Johnston’s signs, watched over several shots:

• the trigger yanked fast and hard;
• the eyes clamped shut just before the shot;
• the muzzle moving before the gun goes off;
• groups that will not come together, though others shoot the same gun well;
• a shooter who is not enjoying the gun and is quick to stop.

The proof is a shot that does not go off. In Johnston’s test on the firing line, the shooter closes their eyes, a helper pretends to load, and a phone films the trigger pull: if the gun lurches with nothing in it, that was a flinch. Deering’s version is done dry, with a friend or a phone watching: an empty centrefire, or a rimfire or shotgun loaded with dummy rounds made for training. Do the first on a range, under its rules; the second only with the gun checked unloaded by you, live ammunition out of the room, the muzzle somewhere safe, and the maker’s leave to dry fire.

Calling your shots helps too: when you cannot tell where the sights sat at the moment the shot went, your eyes may have been shut. In a Shooting Illustrated piece on the flinch, George Harris calls closing the eyes the most prevalent form of the automatic, self-protective response to the noise and the gun’s movement. See Follow-through.

Ball and dummy is the classic proof with a firearm. The USAMU guide finds it most effective with another person loading: the coach chambers a live or a dummy round at random, the shooter must never know which, and any muscle reaction that disturbs the gun shows the coach the error at once. The two then agree on a correction, though the guide admits that in most cases the error only becomes rarer.

Not everyone likes it. Zins hated the drill and sees no place on the range for it: it shows the fault without fixing it. Johnston’s version, eyes closed while a helper loads or does not, can help a shooter keen to be rid of a flinch, he writes, but is not fun, and may set back one who is timid, reluctant or not yet sound in technique.

• Run it on a range, under its rules, with a coach or a friend you trust doing all the loading.
• Use dummy rounds made for training in your calibre, and store them away from your live ammunition after the session.
• After each click, keep the muzzle downrange while the loader checks the gun.

With no bang and no kick, there is nothing to brace against. In dry fire, the USAMU guide says, the reflexes that spoil a shot, tensing the arm against the recoil, straining before the shot and blinking at the noise, are not trained in; they fade, and may disappear completely. Errors that the recoil and sound of live fire hide, it adds, can only be pinned down precisely in dry fire.

• Keep your eyes on the front sight, dot or reticle through the pull and after it, as Deering advises.
• Mix dry and live on the range: Johnston has a shooter dry fire until nothing moves, then fire a live round about every sixth time, and repeat.
• Dry fire can be overdone, the USAMU guide warns: ten minutes at first, and about thirty at most once your shooting improves.

Before dry fire at home, unload the gun and check it yourself, take ammunition and pellets out of the room, and point the muzzle in a safe direction; mix in live shots only on a range, under its rules. Check the maker’s manual first, too: some guns must not be dry fired. Trigger control has examples from makers, and Training at home the air rifle side.

Bigger and louder guns make a flinch worse, Deering writes. A 4-H Shooting Sports fact sheet on pistol form faults, many of which involve anticipating or fighting the recoil, says they often come from too few breaks, fatigue, heavy-recoiling big-bore pistols before the basics are in place, going without eye and ear protection, and poor concentration.

• Your ears. Johnston’s cure includes great ear protection; the USAMU guide wants your ears protected at all times, against damage and against the gun blast and other sounds that break concentration. NIOSH, the US institute for occupational safety and health, tells workers and shooters, in its guidance for indoor firing ranges, to wear earplugs and earmuffs together: in its tests with law enforcement firearms, the pair cut peak noise by 44 dB on average, earplugs alone by 24 dB and earmuffs by 26 dB.
• Even a .22. A .22 rimfire rifle is loud enough to damage hearing in time, the CMP’s rimfire sporter guide warns, and it makes ear plugs or earmuffs mandatory for its competitors on the firing line.
• The calibre. Johnston advises a small, easy-recoiling one in a gun that fits; Deering, plenty of .22 LR, then working back up.
• Rest. Stop before you tire.

A match air rifle has no or small recoil, says the ISSF National Coach Course for rifle, by Goran Maksimovic. A spring-piston airgun is another matter: see Air rifle types.

But anticipation needs no kick. In a video lesson for Shooting Sports USA, Zins describes the shooter who sees the sights line up and wants the shot to go now: a jerk, he says, but also a form of anticipation. On an air rifle or air pistol, watch for a press that hurries as the sights settle, a blink, a hand that tightens, and train it out on the gun’s dry-fire setting, where its maker provides one. For the firearm shooter, the 4-H sheet suggests an air pistol to reduce recoil anticipation.

Not in one place: the USAMU guide, writing of a trigger method it does not recommend, says anticipation “usually results in heeling the shot”, the bullet striking at about one o’clock, while Schoch writes that anticipated shots are almost always low and left for a right-handed shooter, the pistol dipping as grip and forearms tighten. A hole’s place is a hint, not a diagnosis; the pistol correction chart takes the directions one by one.

Even champions anticipate: Zins says that if he did not, he would have shot a perfect score by now. His answer is a shot process. Have a partner write down everything you do to fire one ten, from putting the gun on the bench until it recoils; then follow it every time, and in slow fire abort the shot as soon as a step goes wrong. Most of the shots he aborts, he writes, he stops before the gun has settled in the aiming area.

Schoch gives the mind one word for the last moment: wait, while you watch the sights and ease the trigger back very slowly. And expect it to take months, as Johnston does.

Meanwhile, keep shooting cards. Scanned in Shooter, each one shows where every hole is and what the group measures; whether that means the flinch is fading is your call, and your coach’s.

How do I know if I am flinching?

Fire on a chamber you believe is loaded but is not. Jeff Johnston, writing for NRA Family, has a helper pretend to load while the shooter’s eyes are closed; if the gun lurches with nothing in it, that was a flinch. A dry fire with a friend or a phone watching shows the same, with the gun unloaded and checked and its maker allowing dry fire; ball and dummy, a coach loading live or dummy rounds at random, shows it in live fire. Run Johnston’s test and ball and dummy on a range, under its rules.

Is anticipating recoil bad?

Yes, when it moves the gun before the bullet has left the barrel, as it often does: human reactions are too slow to meet the recoil as it comes, Paul Schoch writes in Shooting Illustrated, so we tense before it. Let the gun recoil, and keep aiming through the shot.

Why do I flinch with a .22?

Because a flinch is a habit, and recoil is only part of it. George Harris, in Shooting Illustrated, writes that it takes few repetitions to build the habit and that every shot reinforces it. A .22 still bangs: the CMP’s rimfire sporter guide calls a .22 rifle loud enough to cause hearing loss in time. And Brian Zins counts wanting the shot to go the moment the sights line up as anticipation too. Wear good ear protection, and train it out dry.