Goodbye Low and Left: 8 Ways to Cure a Flinch

Chris Baker

10 years ago

Recoil anticipation. Pre-ignition push. Heeling. It goes by lots of names.

If you want to improve your handgun shooting, at some point you’re going to run into the issue of flinching. There tends to be a lot of shame and self-denial involved with this problem, but every shooter deals with it at some point. So man up and admit that there’s at least a chance that you might not be an exception to the rule, and that you might have to address it at some point in your development as a shooter. Just to help you feel better, I’ve put a big ol’ picture of my dumb flinch face right at the top of the article. So, egos aside, let’s look at how to cure a flinch so we can start shooting better.

Defining Flinch

Once you’ve come to terms with the tragic truth that your shooting may at least occasionally be affected by flinching, the next step is to understand what exactly we mean by the term “flinch”, and why it’s detrimental to marksmanship:

Flinching Part 1Most of the time when we’re talking about flinching, we’re referring to recoil anticipation. It’s also called pre-ignition push, or healing the gun, or jerking the trigger. There’s lots of names for it, but it all refers to the same problem. If you’re missing a lot, and you don’t know why, there’s a good chance it’s some kind of recoil anticipation. So here’s what happens. Once your sites are on target, you have to hold that gun completely still, except for the pressure that you put on the trigger. But your brain knows what’s about to happen when the gun fires. It wants to preemptively brace your body for the explosion and the loud noise– all that stuff that’s about to happen just two feet from your face. But when your body reacts, it’s usually at the very last instant, while you’re squeezing the trigger. So you might blink your eyes, or dip down the muzzle, or tense all of your muscles up. But all that gets masked by the recoil– you can’t tell what you did wrong. This is especially obvious with novice handgun shooters. Their first couple of shots on target will be dead center, and then they’ll start subconsciously anticipating the recoil. The shots will go low-left, or if it’s a left-handed person, they’re going to go low-right. But it’s not just a new shooter problem. Anybody can develop an issue with recoil anticipation, even if they’ve been shooting for years. A lot of times, it’ll pop back up when you’re trying to increase your speed without losing accuracy. Those low-left shots will pop back up, even if you didn’t have a flinch in slow fire. Flinching can also happen right after the shot goes off, which is sometimes called post-ignition flinch. You can see me doing it here. I’m keeping the muzzle still, and I’m focused on the front sights for the trigger squeeze. But then, right after the shot breaks, I’ve got a blink reflex. This is the result of your body naturally reacting to the sound or the recoil after the fact. This isn’t nearly as big a problem as anticipating recoil, but you can still end up pulling shots off target a little bit. And it also hurts your ability to follow through and track the sight, which can be a problem when you’re trying to shoot faster. Now unfortunately, you can’t just fix a flinch by telling yourself to stop doing it. But there are some things you can do to make sure the recoil isn’t affecting you anymore than it has to. There’s also a few ways to kind of trick your brain into not having that subconscious response.

Fixing the Flinch

Whether it’s a recoil anticipation or flinching after the shot, there are basically two avenues to approach curing a flinch problem: mental and physical. You can wage psychological warfare on yourself and try to trick or re-condition your brain’s response to the stimulii experienced when firing a gun, or you can attack the problem at its root and try mitigating those physical stimulii. There’s not really one catch-all solution, and most people find success with a blended approach. Since the Internets always love a good list, here are eight specific tips for curing your flinch.

Mental Solutions: Train your Brain

1. Acclimate to Recoil
One of the reasons we flinch is that our brains just aren’t accustomed to recoil and muzzle blast. Rapid fire can exacerbate this problem, and the increased noise and pressure from multiple shots in quick succession can easily throw you off and cause a flinch response to start creeping in. This automatic response usually fades as you get more rounds down range and practice more frequently. If you can’t shake it after a time, try moving up to just a couple of feet from the berm and run few strings of rapid fire into the dirt. Don’t worry about aiming, just watch the slide cycle and brass eject. Look at the gun from different angles as it fires. With this exercise, you’re basically removing the pressure of firing accurately and instead, your focus is on “getting used to” the sensations associated with firing the gun.

2. Good Habits Replace Bad Habits
It’s always easier to break a bad habit by replacing it with a good habit rather than trying to make yourself not do something. Like many people, when I personally struggle with flinching, it usually comes in the form of blinking just as the shot breaks, accompanied by a slight downward movement of the muzzle. I’ve found that the best way for me to overcome this is to give my eyes another job to do so that they can’t blink. It just so happens that front sight focus is key to accurate shooting, so before I pull the trigger, I decide that I must track the movement of the the front sight at all costs. Without fail, whenever I keep this in the forefront of my mind, the blinking disappears and with it, the unwanted muzzle movement.

3. Ball and Dummy Drill
The most well-known method for trying to cure a flinch is the ball and dummy drill. It’s a good diagnostic tool, but it has some limitations that are often overlooked, which I’ve demonstrated in the video below.

The Limits of the Ball and Dummy Drill:

Flinching Part 2The ball and dummy drill is when you get somebody else to load your magazines for you and then you have them slip in a dummy round or a snap cab here and there. So when you’re firing, you’ll randomly have a dummy round loaded instead of a live round. But you won’t know when it’s going to be. So if you have a flinch problem, you’re going to notice it right away when you jerk the gun or you blink but a round doesn’t actually go off. Now, it’s great for diagnosing a flinch. And it’s a good way to make you feel stupid so maybe won’t do it again for a few shots. There’s usually more you have to do to actually eliminate the flinch problem completely. Now, the dirty little secret of the ball and dummy drill is that it does not work for diagnosing a flinch you’ve developed in rapid fire. That’s because of what some people have called post ignition push. If you’re shooting multiple rounds quickly, you have to recover from recoil and stay balanced without letting the gun push you around or push you back. That’s mostly accomplished with a good grip and a proper stance. But you might also naturally develop a little pushing motion immediately after the trigger breaks, as kind of a way to compensate. If you get your timing off and your push comes too early, you might start throwing shots and it’s going to look a lot like a flinch, especially if you try to use the ball and dummy drill to diagnose it. You’re going to mistake that push for a flinch. You can see here in this rapid fire string, I’m not showing any signs of flinching or jerking the trigger. But if I do the same thing with a ball and dummy drill, the gun dips down when I hit the dummy. In slow fire, that would be a classic education of a flinch. Here, it’s just post ignition push. If I were to mistake it for a flinch and try to stop doing it, I might actually start shooting slower and less accurately. As long as the push is actually happening after the shot breaks, it’s not really a problem. So don’t let the ball and dummy drill trick you. Use it to confirm that you have good trigger control in slow fire. But don’t confuse flinching with post ignition push in rapid fire.

Physical Solutions: Tame the Gun

4. Know the Basics
No amount of mental trickery will help you get over a flinch if you have poor fundamentals, especially grip and stance. If you have a low grip or loose grip, or if you’re not leaning into the gun enough, you’re just amplifying the effects of recoil, and that can make your flinch worse. If you’re unfamiliar with the fundamentals of handgun marksmanship, check out our post on How to Shoot Faster.

5. Dry Fire Practice
It could be that you don’t actually flinch that bad, but you’re exhibiting some of the same symptoms of flinching by lack of trigger control. Try lots of dry fire practice until you can consistently squeeze the trigger without moving the sights, especially if you have a long, heavy double action trigger.

The classic sign of recoil anticipation is hits drifting low and left (or low and right for left-handed shooters). If your targets look like this, there’s a good chance you’ve developed a flinch.

6. Handgun Choice
I usually don’t like to immediately jump to “buy a different gun” as the easy fix for most problems, but sometimes that really is the best approach. A self-defense pistol has to fit your hands, and you have to be able to control it during rapid fire. Don’t rule out stepping down to a smaller caliber if it allows you to shoot the gun quicker, more accurately, and flinch-free. As an alternative to completely ditching a problem gun, modifications to the grip can go a long way, such as the addition of grip tape for added traction, or a grip sleeve to soften sharp edges.

7. Noise Reduction
If you don’t have enough hearing protection, you’re almost guaranteed to develop a flinch — I’ve noticed this especially with indoor ranges, which can be extremely loud. Make sure your ear protection has a good seal, and you can always double up and use both earplugs and muffs simulataneously. You might be surprised at how much that can help.

8. Stay Loose
There’s a fine balance between controlling the firearm and resisting the recoil. You can’t physically stop recoil from happening, and if you get tense and flex every muscle in your body from trying to do it anyway, you won’t shoot straight. Establish a good grip and just let the recoil happen. Concentrate on recovery and follow-through instead of preventing recoil from moving the gun.

These eight solutions are just some of the quickest and easiest ways to alleviate problems caused by flinching or recoil anticipation. In the long run, it will take regular, intentional practice in order to remove any flinching at all. And even then, if you ever switch to a smaller gun or larger caliber, or when you make small changes to your grip or technique, you may start struggling with some kind of flinch response all over again. The key is to resist the temptation for this normal human reflex be a source of embarrassment and discouragement. Be willing to admit when it’s an issue, and take aggressive steps in your training to overcome it and move on.