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How to cure flinch.

H

Herr Heckler Koch

Guest
have a friend load snap-caps in a revolver or self-loader without telling the shooter where in the stack/cylinder they are. Do not wear hearing protection while curing flinch, the noise alone is a major source of flinch.

Makes for good training as well. Can really see how much you flinch and what not. Good to refine a nice smooth trigger pull.
 

AaronS

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have a friend load snap-caps in a revolver or self-loader without telling the shooter where in the stack/cylinder they are. Do not wear hearing protection while curing flinch, the noise alone is a major source of flinch.

What? Guess my hearing is gone...

I would agree about the use of snap caps. I do this every time I go to the range with my .44 Mag. The first time is a real shock.
I have also had a friend load a mag for my autos with a snap cap (so I dont know when it is comming).
It is funny to see the gun jump when it never went "bang". Great learning tool I feel all should try.

I like to think I might be able to keep my hearing till I die, so the ear protection is a must 100% of my range time. To each his/her own, I guess.
 
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davegran

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Cassville Area -Twelve Miles From Anything, Wiscon
Warning: Always wear hearing protection while practicing!

have a friend load snap-caps in a revolver or self-loader without telling the shooter where in the stack/cylinder they are. Do not wear hearing protection while curing flinch, the noise alone is a major source of flinch.
Dangerous and false. Your hearing can be damaged easily by gunshots in very few occurrences. By the time you react to the actual noise the bullet is out of the barrel. You are anticipating the noise.

Cites:
Noise-induced Hearing loss
How To Cure A Flinch
 

Interceptor_Knight

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The ball and dummy drill is definitely a valuable tool. I am a fan of beginning training with a .22 and then moving to the full power loads. If you can not control a rimfire, you will never do so with a centerfire. You can put alot more rounds down range for a small fraction of the cost. You can never hope to become proficient and maintain that proficiency if you do not regularly shoot a significant number of rounds.
Hearing protection should always be worn.
As cited in the post above mine, dry fire is also necessary. A laser pointer is a valuable tool during dry fire especially when you have a second person observing your practice. You can aim with your sights and have the laser pointed lower. The second person can observe if the dot moves during your dry fire exercise from a less than ideal trigger pull, flinch, buck or jerk.
 
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HandyHamlet

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I call BS on this new age hippie crap. Not to mention advocating hearing loss is irresponsible.

A far more effective and physically safe method to cure flinching is 3,000 fire ants in your panties whilst shooting. If you survive a day of that you will be able to blind a humming bird from a thousand paces at night with a BB pistol. A poor man's training method is to have a trusted range partner armed with a 2x4. Every time you miss dead center you get smashed in the back of the head full force. If you flinch you get it in the nuts.

The end.
 
H

Herr Heckler Koch

Guest
LOL I remember when, I think that it was right here, all the ex-soldiers chanted, "train like you fight, fight like you train." Thank goodness all our stressed vets will be able to hear their MP3-players for wearing hearing protection in combat/training.

It would'a taken a lot of the fun of burning ammo in a Thompson (zero based government budgeting) to have to wear mouse-ears after leaving the 100 dB engineroom. One of my SLJs was airborne noise monitoring; between the non-vital switchboards was the loudest at 104 dB, louder than the main engines. And I was able to qualify sonar watchstander after all that deafening abuse, of course my detection range wasn't what the ST's had.
 

rcawdor57

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Boy howdy!

I always wondered why he typed so loud.


:eek:

:) Well, I cannot speak for Da Herr but for me I wore my ear plugs whenever I was up and about on the sub. Even "up forward" I wore my hearing protection because in most subs you are still exposed to loud fan room noise in non engineering spaces that definitely cause hearing damage. I had several people say to me I was being a bit overboard on the ear plugs but I can still hear as well now as I did when I joined the Navy. There is nothing like NOT wearing your ear plugs in the engine room (we were shutdown at the time) and have a 4500/3000 psi reducer relief valve lift 2 feet from you to convince you to always wear your hearing protection.

Many a throttleman lost their hearing in their left ear "back in the day"....on those old subs.
 
H

Herr Heckler Koch

Guest
. There is nothing like NOT wearing your ear plugs in the engine room (we were shutdown at the time) and have a 4500/3000 psi reducer relief valve lift 2 feet from you to convince you to always wear your hearing protection. Many a throttleman lost their hearing in their left ear "back in the day"....on those old subs.
Never heard of that before and I was the throttleman that was stationed for maneuvering near foreign vessels.

One of the tests I directed as part of POTS was of the lift and blowdown pressure setpoints on the reliefs. After the lift was correct then a ring was adjusted that held the valve open until the required blowdown pressure was reached. When the BD was too short then it sounded just like a BIG machine gun - with a machinist mate pushing the ring around with a screwdriver.

At S1W a major steam leak was demonstrated by opening a 2" valve in a 600# steam line for, if I remember forty years ago correctly, 6 Megawatts-thermal of noise. The noise was palpable, beating on your ears, face and chest.

Oh, I remember another noisy test. We had to cycle power from self-sustaining to 100% and back five times at design rate without a low level alarm in the pressurizer with the steam dumps in a noisy engine room. An assistant test engineer would beat on the deck plates between the TGs near the dump valve operators with a sledgehammer so that the operators could feel the required turning rate and the test engineer in maneuvering, me, could hear the required rate commands.

I really thought that we did an overhaul and test program together. We'll need to meet some day.
 

rcawdor57

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Never heard of that before and I was the throttleman that was stationed for maneuvering near foreign vessels.

One of the tests I directed as part of POTS was of the lift and blowdown pressure setpoints on the reliefs. After the lift was correct then a ring was adjusted that held the valve open until the required blowdown pressure was reached. When the BD was too short then it sounded just like a BIG machine gun - with a machinist mate pushing the ring around with a screwdriver.

At S1W a major steam leak was demonstrated by opening a 2" valve in a 600# steam line for, if I remember forty years ago correctly, 6 Megawatts-thermal of noise. The noise was palpable, beating on your ears, face and chest.

Oh, I remember another noisy test. We had to cycle power from self-sustaining to 100% and back five times at design rate without a low level alarm in the pressurizer with the steam dumps in a noisy engine room. An assistant test engineer would beat on the deck plates between the TGs near the dump valve operators with a sledgehammer so that the operators could feel the required turning rate and the test engineer in maneuvering, me, could hear the required rate commands.

I really thought that we did an overhaul and test program together. We'll need to meet some day.

The loss of hearing for throttlemen was on the old subs that did not have a door but instead had a chain. The Evaporator and Bromide (IIRC) were just to the port side of Maneuvering and when running had that constant steam and motor noise beating on their left ear. A friend of mine, EMC(SS) Gob.. lost most of his hearing in his left ear standing many hours of watch as Throttleman. The reducer relief valve lifting was due to the mechanic adjusting the reducer incorrectly while I was watching. Dumb me...I should have had my hearing protection on but we were shutdown in port. The noise was incredibly loud and extremely painful. I never went without my ear plugs after that one.

We probably did an overhaul together back in 79, 80 or 81 (IIRC) on the Narwhal. I was there for the refueling overhaul. After that it was mostly out to sea on various subs: 671, 624, New Con 758, New Con 759 and commissioning, 663 (reducer relief valve lifting), MTS 635 and finally 729.

Ah...the good ole days. :)
 

Old Grump

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LOL I remember when, I think that it was right here, all the ex-soldiers chanted, "train like you fight, fight like you train." Thank goodness all our stressed vets will be able to hear their MP3-players for wearing hearing protection in combat/training.

It would'a taken a lot of the fun of burning ammo in a Thompson (zero based government budgeting) to have to wear mouse-ears after leaving the 100 dB engineroom. One of my SLJs was airborne noise monitoring; between the non-vital switchboards was the loudest at 104 dB, louder than the main engines. And I was able to qualify sonar watchstander after all that deafening abuse, of course my detection range wasn't what the ST's had.

Navy from 63 to 73 and Army Reserve from 74 to 1980 and there was never a time we didn't wear ear plugs and/or muffs while on the firing line. As a rifle and pistol team member and as a marksmanship instructor I was on the line a lot.

I don't know about your service but the noisiest place on our ships besides the gun mounts was after steering and they too wore hearing protection. You are wrong so give it up. shooting without protection is stupid and irresponsible and advocating it is worse. I pray you haven't gotten anybody else to follow your practice.
 

Captain Nemo

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What is flinch? What is trigger control? Are they the same? Or are they just two independent causes? Are they physical or mental or both? How are they minimized? I think I have very good trigger control. Perhaps spending my teen age years on a farm hand milking 12 cows twice a day had something to do with that. Flinching? Not so good. I don't think there is such a thing as zero flinch 100% of the time. The hundreds of firearm test reports I have reviewed over the years performed by self proclaimed experts nearly always show a flyer. Oh, I forgot, flyers are caused by faulty ammunition.
 

Old Grump

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What is flinch? What is trigger control? Are they the same? Or are they just two independent causes? Are they physical or mental or both? How are they minimized? I think I have very good trigger control. Perhaps spending my teen age years on a farm hand milking 12 cows twice a day had something to do with that. Flinching? Not so good. I don't think there is such a thing as zero flinch 100% of the time. The hundreds of firearm test reports I have reviewed over the years performed by self proclaimed experts nearly always show a flyer. Oh, I forgot, flyers are caused by faulty ammunition.
One affects the other and here is what you can do about it. Not originally mine but I teach it. I learned this at the USAMU during the All Army matches from then national pistol champion Bonnie Harmon.

Dry Fire, teach yourself to use both eyes, concentrating on the sights and your trigger finger.

If you hold your arm straight out in front of you and hold your thumb up can you see the striations on your thumbnail clearly using both eyes, in other words is it in focus? You are a bifocal creature, that is you have an eye on either side of your face and they will turn in to focus on that sight about 30" in front of your nose. If you can do that then both eyes should be working and you can focus on the front sight, That is the hard part and you can see well enough to shoot like a marksman.

Next step is get snap caps for the caliber of your choice and insert it into the gun.

Get a plain sheet of typing or copy paper and in the very center of the paper use a fine point pen with black ink and make a little cross with 2.5 cm horizontal and vertical lines. No larger. Fasten that paper on a horizontal surface at shoulder height in a location with good light.

Pick up your chosen handgun with the off hand and place it in your shooting hand and get a good grip. Grip it firmly like you would a handshake, not to loose, not so tight that you shake. Extend your arm so the muzzle of your gun is no more than a cm away from the paper. Focus on that front sight with both eyes. You will see that the vertical line goes straight up the middle of the sight and the horizontal line sits squarely on the top of your front sight. Your front sight should now be centered in the notch of your rear sight and level.

Now with the gun cocked, your focus entirely on the front sight you play a little mind game. Imagine the sight is one solid piece attached to the trigger. When you pull the trigger back you are trying to pull the front sight back through the center of your rear sight. If you pull, yank, anticipate, jerk, grab anything but a perfect trigger pull those lines will move away from the front sight like a seismometer detecting an earthquake.

The objective of this exercise is to get 10 perfect shots and what you will discover is that when your focus is on the sight/trigger you will have no idea when the gun goes off. That will be your good shot.

Now the fun begins, switch the gun to your left hand and start over again. You will be sweating and hurting and mad at me but I will guarantee you that the top shooters do this and this is why they are top shooters.

Now the easy part, get your two handed grip and take 10 more shots but this part is pretty redundant. The whole point of the exercise is to get your focus on the front sight while your trigger finger squeezes the trigger without disturbing your sight alignment no matter which hand or hands you are using. If you can do that you can do it standing on one leg leaning over a table shooting through a door at an oblique angle or hanging by your knees from a trapeze bar. You will not know what position you will be in when you have to shoot but sight picture and consistent trigger pull will increase your chances of hitting what you want shot. Using both eyes will aid in your sight picture.
 

Plankton

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have a friend load snap-caps in a revolver or self-loader without telling the shooter where in the stack/cylinder they are. Do not wear hearing protection while curing flinch, the noise alone is a major source of flinch.

Dearest Doug/Master Doug/Herr Heckler Doug/: Why don't you run about a 1000 rounds through your piece without hearing protection? I would be anxious to HEAR about your results.:lol:
 

Shotgun

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What? People flinch?

As someone who left the Army with a some hearing loss, with a couple of ear-ringing explosions probably partially to blame, I wouldn't advise shooting without hearing protection either. I think flinch is in large part attributable to muzzle blast, which is present with hear protection too. The use of snap caps is a good way to diagnose flinch, which is the first step in curing it.

The work your way up from a .22 method has merit. I took an unorthodox approach: I shot .357 and .44 magnums as much as possible. After becoming very accustomed to those rounds, 9mm, .40 and .45 ACP were pretty mild.
 

Bushmaster

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+1 on start with a 22 or even an air pistol

never intentionally shoot training without ear protection.
+1 starting with an air pistol or .22.
Also I like to use the snap caps at home on a daily basis to train myself not to anticipate the bang. I found it helps me to also spend a few minutes at the range firing caps before live rounds and after I shoot some live rounds I like to go back to the caps, just keep going back and forth.
 

GreenCountyPete

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Green County, Wisconsin, USA
WORD OF Caution

practice with snap caps but , when your doing your TAP - RACK drills do not fire on the next load return to ready then time out

it is possible to get a powder-less round the primer will propel it in the barrel you now have a barrel obstruction
your next round fired will be that guns last round fired. maybe yours also

powder can be not present , present but to little to function , or contaminated with water or oil

on a line with your hearing protection on or just in a noisy environment a squib load doesn't sound like anything but the hammer falling

always stop and check for a barrel obstruction , unless you are really in a life or death gun fight

it happens more often that you win the lottery or get struck by lightning are those odds you want to put your self at risk with

a local smith had 2 22lr rifles in that came apart when a squib was fired then a fresh round without checking for barrel obstruction if the pressure of a 22lr from a blow back action can cause enough pressure to rupture the barrel and splinter the wood of the forearm imagine the pressure in high pressure center fire pistol round could cause in a locked breach delayed blow back action
 
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