It isn’t uncommon to see beginners go to a gun range and shoot a gun for the first time ever and have them hit the bull’s eye. And then every shot after that is way off target. What’s happening is that first shot introduced them to the force of the recoil. At every subsequent shot they’re anticipating the recoil and trying to compensate for it before or during the trigger pull. This causes their shots to go off target.

Shot anticipation is a bad thing, and there are two things you can do to avoid it. The first is practice, and the second is dry-firing, as described in the previous article article. So you don’t have to click back, here’s the description again:

Make sure your gun is safe (no cartridges in the magazine, and none in the chamber). Move to a room where there is no ammunition, so that there’s absolutely no chance of mistakenly firing a cartridge. Point your gun in a safe direction and pull the trigger. You will have to pull back and let go of the slide before every trigger pull because you won’t have the recoil of the previously fired cartridge doing it for you.

When you dry-fire you should be focusing on your front sight as normal. When you pull the trigger there should be no movement of the gun, if you’re doing it right, because there’s no firing, and no recoil. If the gun moves it’s because you’re anticipating the shot. Continue practicing until you can dry-fire without moving the gun. Then, take that experience to the range where you can practice with live ammo.

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