Training with a .22
Published October 16, 2012 by KevinC
Filed under Competition, Equipment, IDPA, Mindset, Practice, Training
At last week’s IDPA match, it became abundantly clear that I needed some more practice
Because, quite frankly, I sucked.
I’ve had trigger control problems for quite a while, and they’ve returned to haunt me due to a prolonged absence from shooting earlier this year. Controlling trigger jerk is easy in theory; keep a smooth press backwards from start to BANG, then smoothly let off until the trigger resets.
That’s the theory. In reality, in middle of a shooting competition, things don’t always happen that way. Consider this simple IDPA stage from last week’s competition
This is why muscle memory is so important. Because my brain was busy with sorting out the stage procedure, I had little to no bandwidth available for the basics of “aim, breathe, squeeze” required to make an accurate shot. Instead, I had to rely on my body knowing what was the right thing to do because I had repeated it over and over again in practice.
Which brings me to .22 caliber pistols.
.22 is CHEAP. A box of 325 good-quality Federal .22LR rounds is under $20 at the local big-box store, which makes extended training sessions inexpensive and fun, and with the lower recoil of a .22, it’s easier to feel how your finger is moving on the trigger.
I own a Smith and Wesson M22a with a red dot sight which is a great gun for isolating out trigger movement from the other actions of shooting a pistol. The trigger on it is… adequate. It’s about a 5 lb pull with a good reset, but the break is kind of non-existent, however, because it has a red dot scope on it, I can concentrate on the process of how my finger is moving on the trigger and leave the worry of sight alignment behind me.
Here’s the results.
I set up this target at 10 yards and started out the practice session by shooting at the bottom right target and finished it by shooting at the top right target. You can see that as I concentrated more on how I was controlling the trigger, my groups improved until I was dropping them pretty much all inside the bullseye.
Total cost? 50 rounds of .22 and a hour of my time.
This is why using a .22 for practice make so much sense. Unless you’re flinching or having other issues with recoil, a .22 lets you correct most common shooting problems without breaking the bank.
Why compete in practical pistol?
Owning a defensive firearm is good. Very good. Something to be encouraged and something to be taking seriously.
Practicing with your firearm is better, because owning a gun doesn’t mean you know how to shoot it well, much like owning a car with a manual transmission means you inherently know how to drive an stick-shift car.
Todd Green of PistolTraining.com is absolutely one of the best firearms trainers out there, and he comes down squarely in favor of augmenting training with competition because, well, we’ll let him say why.
“Another great thing about competition shooting is that it forces you to shoot someone else’s problem. Instead of just setting up drills you want to shoot, you have to deal with courses of fire you’ve never seen or perhaps even considered before. Not only does this push you to round out your skill set but it can show you where you’ve developed bad habits. My favorite example comes from IDPA: plenty of people practice shoving a magazine into their pocket as part of a ‘œtactical’ or ‘œretention’ reload but then discover in the middle of a match it’s not so easy if you’re kneeling or prone or otherwise in some position that makes accessing that pocket difficult. Getting the mag in can be difficult’¦ getting it back out if you need it can be impossible!”
Read the whole article over here, and then consider how regular training and competition can help you be a better shooter.
