*We are very pleased to feature a guest article written by our good friend, Jeff Gonzales of Trident Concepts. Jeff is an experienced trainer, avid shooter, and long time friend of mine and Tim’s, and we are very excited to have him here. To learn more about training with Trident Concepts, please visit www.tridentconcepts.com – Hilton
Jeff demonstrates a strength training drill on the range, pulling a weight attached to a length of rope.
Want to get better at shooting? Great, I have two words for you….weight room!
Elite athleticism
Ok, maybe you can spell that as one word, but getting stronger will have a positive effect on your life overall and help your shooting. How does getting stronger really help your shooting, I mean specifically what is it improving? I have the fortune of working with several elite and professional athletes. Some of these athletes haven’t touched a gun, much less gone shooting. However, their gains after a private session or a training class outmatch those of their classmates or other similarly skilled individuals. I mean some of them develop into incredible shooters. It is not too surprising, they are great athletes so something physical will not take them as long to master. The two biggest reasons are a greater kinesthetic understanding of their body and the ability to take advantage of their strength when and where they need to for optimal performance behind the trigger.
Power to the people
The greater kinesthetic understanding is a byproduct of working the various muscle groups. Through constant adaption to external loads they have gotten incredibly knowledgable of how to apply power or force. If I ask one of them to concentrate on a certain muscle group, they know exactly what muscle group I am talking about and how to actually make it work for them. That comes in very handy when you are talking about things such as their firing grip, recoil management and resiliency. Once they know which muscle groups to incorporate and can recruit them in unison, the effects are pretty impressive. They are able to make quicker gains than other students with similar starting skills.
Power grip & Nerf footballs
Common mistakes we see regarding the grip have a lot to do with the inability to apply power to the grip. On the recoil management side, it is exasperated when there is poor grip, but then the inability to recruit the larger muscle groups translates into an inefficient means of recovering the muzzle back onto target. When gripping the pistol, it is critical the grip’s power originates from the bottom two digits. Those digits must maintain constant tension through the firing sequence. The moment you relax or fail to actually grip with those digits the grip is compromised. In regards to recoil management and assuming a powerful grip, the upper torso and in specific your lats, traps, delts along with your shoulder girdle need to be retracted as if you are pulling a rope with both hands at the same time. I try to have the student imagine they are squeezing their shoulder blades together in an effort to pinch and hold a Nerf football.
Golf and rubber bands
Resiliency as it relates to recoil management is the ability to return to the original position. One way of thinking about it is as if your upper torso is a rubber band. When applied correctly the recoil impulse will travel rearwards and we use a piston motion to describe it then return to the original position at the end of it’s travel. The front sight is literally traveling to the rear as opposed to a more upward trajectory. When you feel it for the first time it is like that perfect golf swing off the tee. The golf ball sails down the center of the fairway and you scratch your head and ask how did I do that. Shooting can have the same effect and sometimes I find myself mesmerized as I’m tracking the front sight or red dot through the recoil impulse. It is kind of like watching fire. The goal is for every shot to have a similar experience and that is where strength comes into the equation. The stronger you are, the more likely you are to understand the muscle groups, then take advantage of them during shooting and for greater periods of time.
Then there is this; the stronger you are, the harder you are to kill. That’s paraphrased from another great quote, but you should get the point. So, the next time someone asks me what can I do to get better at shooting, I might give them a drill, but in my head I’m thinking, “just get stronger.”
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Great article! Jeff is very knowledgeable! Strength does make it easier to shoot well, no doubt about it. I remember going through the police academy years ago and having a firearms instructor that was very rigidly Modern Tecnique. He would tell us that all that muscle just gets in the way. He was wrong of course as the fittest guys in the class were also the top shooters.
Some ideas/thoughts to supplement Mr. Gonzales’ article:
– Strength is,generated when utilizing an external,resistance which only,allows for 1-6 reps to be performed. If you performed higher reps, you’re either training for hypertrophy or strength endurance.
– The most overlooked aspect of recoil management is wrist strength, specifically the ulnar and radial muscles. as the firearm muzzle rises from the recoil and reward movement of thr slide, the ulnar muscles of the wrist must contract to minimize the movement. while the strength of the last two fingers are important, optimal firearm/grip strength will only occur if you strength the muscles which cross the wrist.
– Resistance training will also help your body adjust/tolerate to rapid changes in blood pressure…which occur during adrenaline release and when shot.
– Resistance training can also help you combat tunnel vision, which occurs during high stress environments.
– The issue with using Nerf Items/tennis balls, is that over time, the material tends to breakdown…losing its resistance quality. Additionally, they fail to provide loading/resistance in a systematic, consistent and progressive manner.
Great read! I hope to see more from Jeff as time and content allows. Postings have slowed for what is understadbly a multitude of reasons. I hope to see it pick up a again without sacrificing the content we’ve all come to love about MSW. Can’t wait to see where 15′ goes all.