How to Pull a Trigger – Ret. Navy S.E.A.L. Teaches Proper Trigger Pull
Hey guys, what’s going on, I’m retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog and founder of The New Rules of Marksmanship training system. In this post, I’m going to teach you how to pull a trigger and stop slapping it like it owes you money. Now let’s go ahead and get started.
So what do I mean by slapping the trigger like it owes you money? Well, it means just jerking that trigger. You’re never going to get what you want out of that gun unless you just sit back and relax and stop messing up what that gun can do.
Firearms are inherently accurate. Your only job as a shooter really is to make sure that you don’t mess any of that up. So there are a few things that you can do that can really help that. When you pull on that trigger, you’re disturbing the sights if you’re not doing it smoothly. So you need to practice doing it smoothly and perfectly every time you shoot.
When you do that, you’ll be able to speed up naturally, but you’re going to be able to do it smoothly. So here are a few ways to improve your shooting and stop slapping that trigger like it owes you money.
#1 Dry Fire Training
Number one on how to pull a trigger, and you’ll probably not be surprised hearing it from me, is dry fire training. You can just sit and practice dry fire training by just pulling the trigger.
Of course, practice all the safety rules and just feel what that trigger feels like. Nothing else, just close your eyes and pull back on that trigger.
You really get just a general feel for a smooth trigger pull. If you don’t have any sense of what it feels like. If you don’t sense that pressure, you’re going to be slapping that trigger.
#2 Visual Patience
Number two is when you’re shooting practice what I call visual patience. Visual patience means that what you see is triggering your mind to tell your finger to move.
This really means waiting for the shot to be there. Don’t try to make or anticipate the shot because that causes a lot of shooting errors. So just relax and practice visual patience.
#3 Breathing
So the third and last one is just breathing. There are so many times I’ll walk down the line when I’m running a range and I’ll see people shooting and I can tell they’re holding their breath. When you hold your breath, your body wants oxygen naturally. That’s going to cause your finger to just jump and move.
So when you’re shooting, you should actually be breathing. A lot of times when I hear people talk about shooting, they say to hold your breath. To tell you the truth, that’s some of the worst advice I’ve ever heard. Physiologically, when you hold your breath:
- Your vision decreases
- You start getting little tremors in your hands
- Your mental acuity decreases.
Those are some of the things you want when you’re shooting a gun, especially when you’re under stress. So just breathe normally and let your finger and your eyes do the work for you. I hope those tips have helped you how to pull a trigger. And until next time, keep paving your path to perfection.
