Do You Need to Retrain in the Fundamentals?
Posted by Warrior Poet Society on Jan 4th 2023
It can be easy for shooters to lose sight of the foundational practices, or ignore them entirely, by trying to use "what works" in the moment. Unfortunately, "success" with a suboptimal practice turns into failure in the long run as undisciplined habits are formed. Don't short circuit your training and development as a shooter by taking shortcuts. Learn it right the first time and correct mistakes rather than overcompensating for them.
There are things we hear floating around in the shooting community—at ranges and online—that seem to be finding their way into common shooting practices, especially among those enthusiasts who maybe learned to shoot with his buddies on the weekends.
There's certainly nothing wrong with shooters getting together on the weekends to enjoy an afternoon at the range. The trouble comes though when one of those buddies tells a learning shooter to practice bad habits in attempt to hit a target.
Don't Correct Your "Low, Left" Problem with Sight Drift
When we use the word "suboptimal" in our classes, what we usually mean is "wrong, incorrect, and possibly stupid and scary." And when people shooting with iron sights decide to drift their rear sight over to compensate for missing their target, we call this suboptimal.
If your gun shoots to the left, it's probably because you're shooting to the left.
More than 90 percent of the time, if you missed the target, it's your fault, not your gun's. And yes. We agree.
Mastering the fundamentals of shooting can be challenging, but if you're going to operate firearms then it's worth it to put in the time and training to get it right and consistently do it right. If you need to misalign your rear sight to hit your target, you're overcompensating for poor fundamentals.
If you line the sights up with the target, pull the trigger, and miss the target, correct the problem. How's your stability and body position? How's your trigger pull?
Correct Your Fundamentals Through Quality Training
Missed targets are usually shooter-induced issues caused by suboptimal habits, usually because of improper training and instruction.
At the end of the day, the foundational issue is the quality of your trigger press and sight alignment and correcting these fundamental skills probably means investing in some professional instruction and coaching.
You don't need a crutch! Of course most of the folks reading this probably already know these things. We know you know that it's worth it in the end to invest the time and money required to shoot properly.
In the end, it's a lot more fun. Train Hard. Train Smart. Live Free.
