Part1: There was a thread on rec.guns on this subject.
A shooter who took a revolver course with Mr Miculek reported his experience a few months ago. Here's the text of his original post, and it addresses some of the things pertinent to your question, such as grip and the like. Posted in 2 parts due to the lenght of the post.
PS5
From: Andrew Colglazier (andrewdy@aol.com)
Subject: Jerry Miculek Class: review and comment (long)
Newsgroups: rec.guns
View: Complete Thread (8 articles) | Original Format
Date: 2001-07-31 06:46:34 PST
I, along with several other TX shooters attended a one day course offered by Gary Burris of Tactical Shooters, with instruction by Jerry Miculek of revolver speed shooting fame, down in Houston this past weekend.
The day began for most of us at the IHOP close to our motels at 7:30 where handshakes and first names were exchanged (and or my part, promptly forgotten). That's where I first met Mr. Miculek. From there we proceeded out to Hot Wells shooting range.
We were able to use a small pistol range paved with asphalt, with room for about 24-25 IDPA style targets lined up shoulder-to shoulder just in front of the berm. Early in the day most of the range was in shade, but as the day progressed the shade withdrew, and soon we stood in full sun. The heat and the
humidity made for challenging conditions, but Gary plied us with water and soft drinks, and no one suffered any lasting consequences, aside from turning a little pink.
I only knew one or two other shooters who took the class and so am unaware of their general shooting abilities or revolver-specific competence. I have been shooting SSR since the end of last year and am classified as a SS.
I shoot a S&W Mountain Gun in .45 ACP, 4" bbl., Craig Spegel boot grips and a Kramer Sidescabbard holster. I had four moon clip holders and about 200 moonclips which I had loaded prior to the class beginning. Ammo was handloaded, 500 rds. 185 gr. Berry's MFG. round nose hollow based (RNHB) over 4
grains of Bullseye, and 500 rds. same bullet over 4.5 grains of Win. 231. Let me say that I am glad I was shooting this ammo as I would never have completed the course intact using full power ammo! I haven't counted up my brass, but I estimate I fired at least 800 rounds. Let me also say that I do not like Win 231 (dirty, dirty!) and will never reload using it again.
Jerry started off the day by making some changes to my shooting style. I normally shoot using an isosceles stance, with elbows more or less fully extended and nearly locked. He changed my stance in the following way; keep the isosceles style, but break the elbows to help absorb recoil, and raise them so that they stick out to the sides rather than down. That way, as he taught
us, the elbows would move to the sides as they took up recoil rather than allowing the weapon to rise on downward pointing elbows, as if they were springs rather than hinges. I found this to be a somewhat uncomfortable but practical change, and one I intend to practice.
The second change he made was to my style of gripping my weapon. He advocates a very high grip so that the hump just behind the hammer is in the web of your hand, at the joint of your thumb. This isn't a big change for me, but the next
alteration was. Jerry wanted us to rotate the grip of the weapon so that it was in line with the center of your body rather than in line with the shooting arm. The hand should move more to the side of the weapon so that more trigger finger could extend through the trigger guard. Then the trigger finger should
be withdrawn so that only the pad between the last joint and the tip of the finger touched the face of the trigger. He did not want us to shoot using the joint over the trigger, but only the pad.
For the 20+ years that I have been shooting a revolver, I have been taught that a smooth trigger face is best for double action shooting. The width of the trigger could be debated, but everybody seemed to agree that smooth was the way to go. Not so Jerry Miculek! He claimed that if anyone wanted to beat him in match, the best way to do it was to equip his revolver with a smooth faced trigger. His is serrated, just like from the factory. This prevents his finger from slipping deeper through the trigger guard and wrapping around the trigger, throwing off his shots.
Well, OK. I tried it and it does help, but the strain this technique put on the tendons of my wrist was not welcome. Fine. I can adjust to just about anything if it will help my shooting.
The third pointer from Jerry pertained to the shooting wrist. We all extended our weapons (empty) in our shooting stance as he walked down the line, tapping on the underside of the barrel to evaluate how stiff our wrists were. He found mine to be, shall we say, less than stiff. Me, a limp wrister! Ahhhhh! But this is something that directly contributes to recoil control, and omething I had to work on. I found that tightening up my grip helped with this issue, and by the end of the course Jerry commented that my wrist had tightened up considerably, leading to less muzzle rise.
We finally got down to shooting. We started with the "Bill Drill" (who is Bill, please?). I had never done this drill before, but I found it to be very useful. The drill requires a target at about 10 yards, with a piece of tape about six inches long vertically oriented in the middle of the target. On the IDPA target, this means down the middle of the c.o.m. "0" zone. The drill
consists of six shots rapidly delivered as close to that piece tape as possible, as fast as possible. This is a diagnostic drill that helps see where your shots are going. I could hit close to the tape with regularity, but with more shooting, the bullet pattern started to show that many of my hits were clustering to the right and slightly high in relation to the tape. Jerry told me that this pattern indicated that I am hitting the last portion of the trigger stroke too hard, that my double action pull isn't smooth and consistent all the way through. Something else to work on. Perhaps a smoother, lighter trigger pull would help with this. Uh, and maybe not.
We worked on other drills as well. I may not remember all of them or discuss them in sequence. IIRC, we then worked on our reloads. By this time the pavement had soaked up a lot of heat, and picking up dumped ammo was a painful experience. I had to wrap a piece of masking tape around my weak hand middle
finger to prevent it from being burned by the forcing cone during reloads. The revolvers became hotter and hotter, and we had to take breaks to allow the weapons to cool enough to be handled. Concerning reloads; Jerry stressed looking at your hands during the reload, not at the target. A muffed reload costs you time, and taking a little extra time to perform your reload consistently is worth it, according to him. Tactical shooters may argue with
the wisdom of this in a gunfight, saying that it is better to keep your head up and looking for your bad guy, seeing what he is doing. Well, OK. But Jerry isn't a tactical shooter, and his technique is to get the gun loaded as fast as possible, to cut the uselessness of that weapon to as short a time as possible.
We worked on shooting strong hand, weak hand, unsupported. One thing Jerry counseled which I will accept and put into practice during strong or weak hand shooting is to avoid locking out the shooting arm. He advocated letting the shooting elbow bend a bit, which helps soak up recoil, causing the weapon to move less from the target. If you keep your shooting arm locked and extended, when the gun goes off, the muzzle will move farther from the point of aim because the movement comes from your shoulder. Bending your elbow allows a more springlike method of recoil absorption, taking some of the strain off your wrist and moving it to your elbow, which results in less movement of the
muzzle. I found this to be true for me, and I will use this technique in the future.
----see part 2 in next message------------
