I cannot.
This article is just my attempt to put into words a major breakthrough that I had in my shooting several years ago.
Now, I’m still not the most amazingest shooter out there. In the circles I run in inside of this industry and community, I’m probably average to a little better than average and I’m certainly always looking for ideas, concepts, and techniques that can help me find my next hypergrowth in performance.
Of course there is ultimately no substitute for repetition and practice but in my large number of interviews and conversations with the highest performing shooters in our country most tend to describe moments of hypergrowth or breakthroughs that come from distinct singular insights or technique changes. The same is true for me.
Breakthrough: Active VS Passive Recoil Management
I would describe this particular insight or breakthrough as understanding the difference between active and passive recoil management. I heard this concept described this way for the first time this past weekend from Riley Bowman when we were at TacCon and having a good phrase to describe this prompted me to write this article.
When I understood that I don’t have to stop, prevent, or even mitigate to a large degree the recoil of my gun, that changed things for me. Simply put I think of Active Recoil Management as just that. Working against the recoil and trying to minimize how much movement or lift there is in the gun. Success is measured by how little lift there is in the muzzle when you are shooting.
Active Recoil Management is a test in technique and in strength.
I remember one particular moment at a gun school conference watching one of the instructors teaching a class on recoil management and spending a great amount of time showing us various techniques that were intended (or at least the way I assimilated the instruction led me to think the techniques were intended) to minimize the felt and visible recoil of the gun.
What If You Aren’t Strong Enough to Stop Recoil?
The instructor teaching the class looked like a guy who spends a lot of time in a gym. Built. Ripped. Tough as nails. I remember looking at him and thinking, “sure its easy for you.” Whereas I’m a guy who doesn’t look like he spends much time in a gym and I thought, incorrectly, that I would never be able to be as good a shooter as all of these big time, top shooters, because I just lacked the upper body strength.
That is about where I was until the big breakthrough. Until the big insight hit me. I just assumed, that upper body strength was correlated directly with shooting capability potential.
And certainly there is a minimum amount of upper body strength necessary to perform at a high level with a handgun, and being stronger does have its advantages, but it isn’t a dealbreaker. Not being the toughest guy in the room doesn’t mean you can’t perform at the same level.
How Fast Can You Reset The Trigger?
The first insight that led to my breakthrough was when I realized that I cannot reset the trigger faster than the gun cycles. Certainly I practice to reset the trigger during the recoil and cycling of the gun but I will never be faster than the recoil. Why is that relevant? Because it means that me reducing the recoil of the gun doesn’t mean I can shoot it any faster.
Frankly, if the gun recoils a lot or a little really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have any impact on my ability to get the next shot off as fast as I’m humanly able and as accurately as I’m able.
So then the question has to be asked…
So Why Does Our Grip Matter If Recoil Mitigation is a Myth?
If you are anything like me you might be thinking that this doesn’t add up. Afterall we spend a lot of energy talking about how to grip a gun, how to stand and present the gun (stance/balance), and how to follow through with the shot all with the goal of stopping or reducing recoil right?
Wrong. And this is the other insight that led to my own personal breakthrough. All of that stuff we do is important and critical but not because we are trying to reduce recoil necessarily. It is, first and foremost, because we are trying to create a consistent, clean, and predictable return of the gun and the sights back to the point of origin. If we reduce recoil then that is helping with that consistent and predictable return but then reducing recoil becomes a method, not the actual goal itself.
All those fundamentals are about you making the gun come back to the place it was when your broke the shot as simply, directly, and predictably as possible so that you can acquire the next sight picture and send the next shot if needed. That is the actual objective.
And So Passive Recoil Management Gets It Done
In the words of the great Rob Leatham (whose words I previously didn’t understand), “let it kick.” I’ve decided that I do have the necessary minimum strength required to grip the gun in a way to ensures a consistent and direct recoil motion and I do not need to stop or fight the recoil. I do need to control the gun and manage it in a way that returns it predictably to where it began.
Part of Passive Recoil Management is understanding that the gun counteracts its own recoil to some degree already. The gun “lifts” at the point the slide reaches the most rear point and some amount of the energy is dissipated by rotating in your hand. This happens because you are holding the gun below the bore axis and so the grip acts like a lever on the other side of a fulcrum of rotation.
However when the slide return fully forward, utilizing the stored energy in the recoil spring it will come to its most forward point and that also comes with a certain amount of energy which will, to some degree, return the muzzle downwards. The gun does some of the work for you. It requires really very little additional work to finish returning the muzzle to the original point of aim.
So What Does That Mean To Me?
I do not have to be super tough (though being more fit and more healthy are worthwhile endeavors that will help with shooting) to be able to shoot very quickly and accurately. I do not have to fight recoil like it’s a really bad thing. It is ok, and in my personal experience preferable, to operate in a mindset in which I allow recoil to happen and focus my fundamentals like grip and stance on the most consistent and predictable return from recoil.
I now call this Passive Recoil Management.
Ok, personal sharing time is over and I hope that this helps someone out there just a little.
