Riley Bowman: This is the Concealed Carry Podcast, Season 13, Episode 15.
Riley Bowman: And welcome to the Concealed Carry Podcast, brought to you by HK.
Riley Bowman: Today is Wednesday, April 15th. It's tax day, holy cow. Now,
Riley Bowman: April 15th, 2026, hopefully folks are at least, at the very least,
Riley Bowman: getting your extension put in if you haven't done anything.
Riley Bowman: So anyway, happy tax day to everybody. I'm sure it's your favorite day of the year.
Riley Bowman: And if you're a tax accountant, it is definitely not your favorite day of the year.
Jacob Paulsen: Sucks.
Riley Bowman: Tomorrow is a little bit better.
Jacob Paulsen: A little bit. Maybe a little bit. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: But anyway, we're here with you for another episode of the Constell Carry Podcast.
Riley Bowman: Thanks for joining us. We've got, I think, an interesting topic today.
Riley Bowman: Uh we're going to talk about uh a major mind mindset shift there's a tongue
Riley Bowman: twister potentially for you a mindset shift mindset.
Jacob Paulsen: Shift mindset shift mindset shift mindset shift mindset shift
Riley Bowman: You're pretty good at that oh.
Jacob Paulsen: I did better than i thought i would
Riley Bowman: Yeah you did you did very well i could see that very quickly turning into something
Riley Bowman: other than minds shit you see where i'm going right so anyway it's a family
Riley Bowman: friendly program let's move on Welcome to the podcast.
Riley Bowman: Today's episode sponsored by HK, in fact.
Riley Bowman: We appreciate their support, long time now, support of the Concealed Carry podcast
Riley Bowman: for making this possible.
Riley Bowman: You guys are hopefully well familiar. If you've listened to past episodes in
Riley Bowman: recent memory, even you've seen, you know, we had, I don't know,
Riley Bowman: five or six or whatever episodes we recorded right at the HK booth at Shaw Show
Riley Bowman: just a couple months ago.
Riley Bowman: And they continue to support everything we do here in our mission at concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: So we're happy to support them and hope that you will do the same.
Riley Bowman: You can head on over to hk-usa.com to see their full lineup of products,
Riley Bowman: all their pistols and rifles and other accessories and cool products.
Riley Bowman: Even just if you want to pick up a cool t-shirt.
Riley Bowman: They always have some fun t-shirt designs, hats, holsters for HK pistols are
Riley Bowman: also available on their website.
Riley Bowman: We make them too, obviously, at KSG Armory, but they do have some,
Riley Bowman: I think, for some models we don't quite support.
Riley Bowman: Even though we try to support as many HKs as we can.
Riley Bowman: What else? Yeah, just awesome guns. So recently, you know, got our hands on
Riley Bowman: the VP9CC, which is their newest microcompact.
Jacob Paulsen: I was going to point out in an anonymous fashion, we got an email, you and I, this week.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: From a gentleman who works for a firearm manufacturer that is not HK.
Riley Bowman: Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Asking for our opinion on which HK he should buy, the CC9 or the new VP9CC. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: I thought it was an interesting email as well.
Jacob Paulsen: I was like, hmm, okay. Well, when you work for a different company that makes
Jacob Paulsen: guns that people have heard of, and you're looking to carry an HK as your daily
Jacob Paulsen: carry, that tells you something about HK.
Riley Bowman: That's a good point. That's a good point.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, they're all fine firearms. Jacob's carrying a CC9 right now.
Riley Bowman: I'm carrying a VP9A1 series, the F.
Riley Bowman: So it's a pretty awesome gun. Kevin on YouTube says this HK's look nice.
Riley Bowman: I mean, they do look nice. I think they look fine. Yeah. I mean,
Riley Bowman: I'm not super, like, into the aesthetics of a firearm.
Riley Bowman: I care more about how it works, but I think they look fine.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, they're good. good uh so anyway hk
Riley Bowman: hk-usa.com thank you for your support of our
Riley Bowman: sponsors and of course you can always pick them up at a
Riley Bowman: local dealer today's episode all sponsored by the
Riley Bowman: pistol intelligence online video course which you can find at concealed carry.com
Riley Bowman: and if you don't want to navigate your way through the site there or whatever
Riley Bowman: you can just go to concealed carry.com forward slash piq course i'll take you
Riley Bowman: directly to a page where you can learn more about the course and sign up for it if you'd like.
Riley Bowman: But Guardian Nation members, I should tell you, if you're already a Guardian
Riley Bowman: Nation member, you already have access to it. You should take advantage of that.
Riley Bowman: But you are welcome to buy the course a la carte.
Riley Bowman: I think the link I just gave you actually puts you on a landing page where you
Riley Bowman: can buy the course and get 100 pack of the Pistol IQ targets along with it. Yeah, it's a bundle.
Riley Bowman: So it's a pretty good deal when you go that way too. I mean,
Riley Bowman: the course ends up being like 20 bucks or something because you're already getting $50 worth of targets.
Riley Bowman: But anyway, guys, check out the Pistol IQ course online at concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: That's going to make sense to you as we talk about today's topic, too.
Riley Bowman: I mean, I teach about the very things in that course that we're going to talk
Riley Bowman: about here today. You'll actually see some of that inaction in the course.
Riley Bowman: And for whatever reason, Jacob's been through the course. And even with that,
Riley Bowman: he had some aha moments recently. And that's what we're here to talk about today.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes. I mean, the most recent thing that happened is I got some vernacular to
Jacob Paulsen: describe an aha moment that I had several years ago.
Jacob Paulsen: So, you know, we were at TACON in Dallas several weeks ago and you used some verbiage.
Jacob Paulsen: You basically said passive versus active recoil management.
Jacob Paulsen: And I just never heard those words from you or anyone for that matter.
Jacob Paulsen: And I was like, huh, yeah, like those are the words that describe the thing
Jacob Paulsen: I've been thinking about for years.
Jacob Paulsen: You know, like that's been impactful for me.
Jacob Paulsen: So this was the moment I was just like, you know what, now that I have these
Jacob Paulsen: words that I think describe this concept really well, I'm going to go write about it.
Jacob Paulsen: And so, yeah, I published a little article on our site on this topic with that language in mind.
Riley Bowman: It was really interesting to me because, and I think I actually want to talk
Riley Bowman: about this other thing a little bit as it relates to what you're describing right now.
Riley Bowman: And I'll describe what that is. And then what that is, I mean,
Riley Bowman: sorry, what that is, is I was surprised when you had me go through your article
Riley Bowman: and I read it, of course, and you wanted to make sure that you got everything
Riley Bowman: correct and accurate. And so I reviewed it.
Riley Bowman: And I was surprised because you're like, I don't remember hearing the words passive and active.
Riley Bowman: And I'm like, I know I've said those words before. Talk about recoil.
Jacob Paulsen: But we all know my memory is crap.
Riley Bowman: So that's a thing too. But here's what I'm really getting at is there are times
Riley Bowman: I've experienced it myself.
Riley Bowman: You go to a course, a seminar, whatever, or you're just watching a YouTube video.
Riley Bowman: And it's not even about anything that's particularly new to you necessarily.
Riley Bowman: Maybe 90% of it's like review. You're like, ah, I've heard this before.
Riley Bowman: But then there'll be this one little nugget, this one little phrase,
Riley Bowman: a word even, that is like, I mean, it just, it suddenly clicks.
Riley Bowman: You identify with it. It just hits you in a way or in a moment or whatever.
Riley Bowman: Or it could entirely be something, too, where, you know, two years ago,
Riley Bowman: five years ago, 10 years ago, when you were learning such and such concept that
Riley Bowman: you just weren't quite ready.
Riley Bowman: Like, you're just in a different place now, a different perspective,
Riley Bowman: a different level of understanding.
Riley Bowman: And, you know, all of a sudden, you know, maybe you heard something similar
Riley Bowman: the same or even the same way 10 years prior.
Riley Bowman: But it just didn't quite click. It didn't make sense. It didn't jive,
Riley Bowman: you know. So that's where I actually wanted to start today was just pointing that out.
Riley Bowman: I think that's worth noting that I think for all of us, and I'm talking about
Riley Bowman: you and me, and I'm talking about those listening and watching the podcast,
Riley Bowman: it's a good life lesson to not think you know all the things all the time,
Riley Bowman: including about topics that you think you already know about.
Riley Bowman: Because I've heard people make the comment to me like, oh, I don't know that
Riley Bowman: I want to go take class such and such from instructor so-and-so because it sounds
Riley Bowman: like it's already something I know or I already understand. And,
Riley Bowman: I can understand that. I can relate to that because I've been there, done that.
Riley Bowman: But I've also signed up for classes that I, upon reading the class description,
Riley Bowman: I'm reading it and I'm just thinking, well, it doesn't sound particularly,
Riley Bowman: you know, whoa, like I really need that class.
Riley Bowman: But it was more about taking the class from that instructor because I wanted
Riley Bowman: to see how they taught it.
Riley Bowman: And then so I went there in the perspective of I want to see how this other
Riley Bowman: instructor teaches something, you know, that may be similar to how I even teach,
Riley Bowman: but I want to see how they do it.
Riley Bowman: And then they say something in that course that is like, whoa,
Riley Bowman: boom, light bulb moment. And it's like lightning.
Riley Bowman: Because and i'm not i'm not because i'm not expecting it that's probably one
Riley Bowman: one thing because i'm i'm trying to view it from this other perspective and
Riley Bowman: all of a sudden something just hits me out of nowhere and it's like whoa okay
Riley Bowman: and now i understand something new yeah yeah i was you know and i think that's
Riley Bowman: a really cool thing about learning these things.
Jacob Paulsen: Are all journeys right and i think that i think that the the perspective you
Jacob Paulsen: have to have you know what i'll add to what you said or how i'll respond to
Jacob Paulsen: what you just said is the the critical perspective here is just acknowledging
Jacob Paulsen: that we never understand any concept at a complete level.
Jacob Paulsen: Like whatever it is you already know or have learned, you can learn that at
Jacob Paulsen: a deeper level in a more significant way.
Jacob Paulsen: And so it's always a journey.
Jacob Paulsen: So this particular thing, which we haven't really defined yet,
Jacob Paulsen: this active versus passive recoil management thing, I think that the first clue
Jacob Paulsen: for me was something I missed completely, and it was Rob Latham.
Jacob Paulsen: Rob Latham, I think this was an in-person thing. I think we were at a shot show
Jacob Paulsen: in the Springfield Bay, Industry Day at the Range.
Jacob Paulsen: Or maybe it was a YouTube video. I can't remember.
Jacob Paulsen: But it was Rob Latham who said it. And he basically said something like,
Jacob Paulsen: someone asked him something about recoil management.
Jacob Paulsen: And he basically said, what's the big deal? Just let it kick.
Jacob Paulsen: Just let it recoil. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: And at the time, I remember thinking, no. I don't understand what he's saying
Jacob Paulsen: because that does not compute.
Jacob Paulsen: That does not jive with the files in my brain because the files in my brain
Jacob Paulsen: say the recoil is bad and we have to stop the recoil.
Jacob Paulsen: So that was the first clue. And looking back on it now, I look back and I'm like, okay.
Jacob Paulsen: At some point, that started to click a little bit. But at that moment,
Jacob Paulsen: at that time, which was probably something like 2016 or 2017 or something, it didn't jive.
Jacob Paulsen: I'll give you another clue in the journey I was at
Jacob Paulsen: an event I don't think I should be specific I was at an event,
Jacob Paulsen: it was a conference style event and there were lots of instructors teaching
Jacob Paulsen: lots of classes and there was one particular class being taught by one particular instructor and
Jacob Paulsen: it was a recoil management course it was basically like how can you do a mag
Jacob Paulsen: dump and put them all through the same hole in the target do do do do do do
Jacob Paulsen: do And it was a loud class to behold, in fact.
Jacob Paulsen: And I remember watching, and this guy, he was teaching all these techniques
Jacob Paulsen: to basically keep the gun shooting as flat as possible.
Jacob Paulsen: That was the jam. That was the class.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think that at some point in your journey, shooting flat sounds like the best thing.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think that we even, you see comments on social, it's like,
Jacob Paulsen: look how flat shooting that gun is.
Jacob Paulsen: Or look how well you are at shooting that gun flat. right?
Jacob Paulsen: Like that's a desirable outcome to have a flat shooting gun.
Jacob Paulsen: And so I'm in this class and this dude's doing it, doing the thing. And I,
Jacob Paulsen: The guy who was teaching the class looked like a linebacker.
Jacob Paulsen: He was just ripped. He still is.
Jacob Paulsen: Anyway, just a ripped dude. I looked at that cat and I was like,
Jacob Paulsen: bro spends time in the gym.
Jacob Paulsen: And a lot of it, or has been, or has. And I do not look like that.
Jacob Paulsen: For those who are not watching the video, I am not a guy who looks like he hangs out in the gym.
Jacob Paulsen: So I remember looking at him and thinking, well, that's easy for you.
Jacob Paulsen: Right like i get that there's techniques you know that all
Jacob Paulsen: of us can employ to try and make the gun more flat shooting but
Jacob Paulsen: like i just am not going to be capable of doing it the
Jacob Paulsen: way you are capable of doing it i don't have i don't
Jacob Paulsen: bring to the table the assets you have and so
Jacob Paulsen: so therefore i'll never be able to achieve the
Jacob Paulsen: same level of performance that you're achieving yeah that's
Jacob Paulsen: that's what i thought and i and around the same time i remember
Jacob Paulsen: thinking the same thing about you riley i'm like looking at riley thinking hey like
Jacob Paulsen: this is a guy who's bigger stronger you know
Jacob Paulsen: working on his grip muscles and for these all
Jacob Paulsen: these shooting related muscles and because he wants to be the best in his class
Jacob Paulsen: and i i'm just not gonna invest the same amount of time into that because it's
Jacob Paulsen: not as important to me and so therefore i will never be as good at shooting
Jacob Paulsen: as that because i just cannot control the recoil the same as all these buff dudes can mm-hmm
Riley Bowman: Yeah, I mean, and I fell for the same trap years ago as well,
Riley Bowman: you know, looking at really good shooters and some of whom are very strong.
Riley Bowman: And there is, by the way, there is a correlation here that I know it was Charlie
Riley Bowman: Perez has mentioned this, has talked about this.
Riley Bowman: There's a few others that have talked about similar things or have done similar things.
Riley Bowman: But like Charlie, I know has, you know, a grip, you know, strength measuring
Riley Bowman: tool, right? So you just grasp it, and you just squeeze and see how much you
Riley Bowman: can deliver, and it measures in pounds.
Riley Bowman: And there's been some people that have applied some thought to this and suggested,
Riley Bowman: well, if you can grip with at least X number of pounds, then you've got what
Riley Bowman: it takes to grip a gun fine.
Riley Bowman: If you can't achieve that, you're probably going to struggle a little bit.
Riley Bowman: And I think that's a little bit of an ambiguous number, but let's just say it's
Riley Bowman: 75 to 100 pounds or whatever.
Jacob Paulsen: Sure. Okay.
Riley Bowman: Um what i do know is that there are some really high level shooters like i mean,
Riley Bowman: you can look at jerry michelek and you could say well jerry doesn't
Riley Bowman: look like he's he's a gym bro he's not a gym bro okay but i've
Riley Bowman: i i don't remember if it was charlie or somebody else i know
Riley Bowman: somebody's measured jerry's grip strength before and
Riley Bowman: it is very very high i don't remember the exact number but
Riley Bowman: it's a very very high number in terms of script strength right
Riley Bowman: and so and some people are just they just perhaps it's
Riley Bowman: genetics right or it could be that they grew up doing a lot of physical labor
Riley Bowman: with their hands and arms and they just develop that grip strength or whatever
Riley Bowman: right and so there are there's definitely a correlation of some very high level
Riley Bowman: shooters that also have high grip strength and that,
Riley Bowman: is definitely a help when it comes to shooting.
Jacob Paulsen: Right? Absolutely. And I mentioned this in the article. I say,
Jacob Paulsen: I think I say it two different ways.
Jacob Paulsen: I say, one, that there is a minimum necessary amount of strength to be able
Jacob Paulsen: to manage the gun properly.
Jacob Paulsen: So it's not like, there's no world where like no strength is required.
Jacob Paulsen: There's a minimum requirement of strength. Now that's, like there's just,
Jacob Paulsen: there's a minimum threshold you've got to be able to meet.
Jacob Paulsen: And second thing I say in there is basically...
Jacob Paulsen: Being stronger and healthier and more fit in any ways you want to interpret
Jacob Paulsen: those words definitely has its advantages in shooting.
Jacob Paulsen: That's absolutely a fact. Being stronger, having more grip strength,
Jacob Paulsen: having more whatever physicality, all those things definitely are helpful as a shooter.
Jacob Paulsen: So I don't mean to downplay that. But what I'm trying to contrast is like this,
Jacob Paulsen: the perspective I had back then, this is early in this little tiny journey we're
Jacob Paulsen: talking about with relative to recoil management.
Jacob Paulsen: My perspective was one of like, that's a deal breaker.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, right. Right. Like I can never perform at a high level.
Jacob Paulsen: Right. Because I don't have that.
Riley Bowman: Your ceiling of performance is like you perceived it as, you know, maxing out here.
Riley Bowman: Right. And now you're realizing that, you know, maybe it won't be here,
Riley Bowman: but it can get a lot closer to that than what you thought.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. You can think of it like a percentage basis, right? Whereas before I might've
Jacob Paulsen: thought like, Hey, 40% of this is physicality. And now it's like,
Jacob Paulsen: you know, maybe, maybe it's like 3%. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: You know, so, so it's just not as big of a deal as I used to think it was.
Riley Bowman: I completely agree with that. And cause you were just saying,
Riley Bowman: you know, there's some minimal threshold in terms of strength to be able to
Riley Bowman: shoot a gun effectively.
Riley Bowman: And I would actually even push back against that a little bit because in some
Riley Bowman: experimentation I've done with where I've were and I've even done some demonstrations
Riley Bowman: in class and I'm thinking about doing it more just a basic demo in some of my
Riley Bowman: pistol IQ classes to to prove a point here that it really is about this thing
Riley Bowman: we're going to talk about,
Riley Bowman: which is I'm not going to spill the beans just yet.
Riley Bowman: But where I've done some demonstrations where I apply a very weak grip to the gun,
Riley Bowman: and usually I'm showing one thing, but I can use that to show another thing,
Riley Bowman: which is I can show you just how fast a person can shoot, even with almost no grip on the gun at all.
Jacob Paulsen: There's still a minimum required strength there.
Riley Bowman: Minimum but i mean it's it's a very low i would say that almost i would say that anybody can.
Jacob Paulsen: Achieve i'd say any adult can probably
Riley Bowman: Achieve yeah any any.
Jacob Paulsen: Adult's going to show up to the range with the minimum necessary strength to get
Riley Bowman: This done yeah there's a little bit of a contrast here i'd like to also bring
Riley Bowman: into the discussion um you know you were talking about okay there's definitely
Riley Bowman: a correlation that there's some high high performers who also have this high
Riley Bowman: grip strength and that certainly helps them um i want to bring into the discussion
Riley Bowman: a little bit another real-life example,
Riley Bowman: which happens to be a couple of little girls out of southern Utah by the name
Riley Bowman: of Justine and Jalise Williams, who are, I think at this point,
Riley Bowman: they are pretty, you know,
Riley Bowman: single or unanimously declared as the winningest female pistol shooters.
Riley Bowman: Well, certainly in the case of Jalise, a lot of Justine's titles have been on
Riley Bowman: the PCC side, but even still,
Riley Bowman: Justine has won a number of titles in carry
Riley Bowman: optics division and other things right and when you see
Riley Bowman: where they finish they're also finishing right
Riley Bowman: there i mean right with some of the
Riley Bowman: top guys at nationals and stuff like that and they
Riley Bowman: are like barely well in the case of jayleason she's like i don't know five foot
Riley Bowman: five foot one maybe little little girls you know i mean they're not girls anymore
Riley Bowman: they're they're they're women but they are compared to you know the frank proctor
Riley Bowman: somebody I was just commenting about Frank or Mike C.
Riley Bowman: Klander or, you know, whomever.
Riley Bowman: Like they were talking about a large size disparity, arguably strength disparity,
Riley Bowman: but yet they are shooting very effectively.
Riley Bowman: And so I'm just bringing that to bear that in this discussion that you can be
Riley Bowman: a five foot tall, you know, young lady that isn't necessarily, you know,
Riley Bowman: a weakling by any stretch of the imagination, but not what you necessarily consider to be strong.
Jacob Paulsen: But does not look like a Marine.
Riley Bowman: Right. Exactly. And yet they can compete in.
Riley Bowman: You know 85 90 you know sometimes even plus 90 percent of the winners at nationals
Riley Bowman: which is not a small feat i'm just going to point out.
Jacob Paulsen: I mean the higher up you go in the scale of performance the more every little
Jacob Paulsen: tiny advantage matters of course right so when you're competing at that level
Jacob Paulsen: like all this stuff becomes really
Jacob Paulsen: important because any little squeak of performance you can get it matters.
Jacob Paulsen: But, you know, like broadly speaking, when we're talking about an acceptable
Jacob Paulsen: performance level, like I look at my objective in my training not to be the
Jacob Paulsen: guy who can go win USPSA Nationals.
Jacob Paulsen: I look at my objective of being a guy who is, you know, more than capable of
Jacob Paulsen: stepping up to the bat and hitting a home run, right, in a defensive fight.
Jacob Paulsen: Like I don't need to be the home run derby winner.
Jacob Paulsen: I don't care if I'm on the all-star team. I just want to be capable of swinging
Jacob Paulsen: the thing and getting a home run.
Jacob Paulsen: So, so that, you know, that's, that's how I look at this. And I think that recoil
Jacob Paulsen: management is pretty critical in that context.
Riley Bowman: Oh, for sure. I think, you know, it's one of the.
Riley Bowman: Earliest things i mean that becomes relevant in what
Riley Bowman: i teach over a two-day pistol intelligence course is sort
Riley Bowman: of like i mean we talk about accuracy and
Riley Bowman: we and we you know we do a little bit of a warm-up with that but we jump right
Riley Bowman: into grip and recoil management because that's kind of the foundation i think
Riley Bowman: of good shooting um if you can manage recoil in such a way that the gun behaves
Riley Bowman: predictably and returns back to target for every shot or after every shot.
Riley Bowman: There's really almost nothing you can't do with that gun at that point.
Riley Bowman: And I think that's where I wanted to go next, Jacob, is one of the big kind
Riley Bowman: of breakthroughs in this mindset shift for you.
Riley Bowman: And this is what you started with in your article is basically asking the question.
Riley Bowman: It's actually the title of the article, by the way. If you guys want to go read
Riley Bowman: it for yourself, you can go to concealedcarry.com.
Riley Bowman: It was published on April 4th of this year, 2026.
Riley Bowman: And it's titled, Can You Reset the Trigger Faster Than the Gun Cycles?
Riley Bowman: And that's really the question. And so you're like, can I reset the trigger
Riley Bowman: on my gun faster than the gun recoils back and the slide comes back forward?
Riley Bowman: Can I reset it that fast? No, I cannot.
Riley Bowman: And so therefore, it made this shift, it sounds like, in understanding that, well,
Riley Bowman: if I can't reset the trigger any faster than the gun cycles,
Riley Bowman: If during the course of the gun cycling, it basically comes back to target somehow, some way, then...
Riley Bowman: Then you're good, right?
Jacob Paulsen: I would think of it this way.
Riley Bowman: Expand upon that.
Jacob Paulsen: Here's another way of describing this. Let's imagine in a theoretic scenario
Jacob Paulsen: that I had whatever strength is necessary to hold a gun and shoot it and that
Jacob Paulsen: it would experience zero lift.
Jacob Paulsen: It would be literally flat shooting.
Jacob Paulsen: So let's just imagine that, that I am capable of that level of feet, physical strength.
Jacob Paulsen: So if I could do that, would I
Jacob Paulsen: then be able to reset the trigger faster than the slide could
Jacob Paulsen: get back into battery no right so
Jacob Paulsen: okay then let's just assume for a second and this is
Jacob Paulsen: where the other half of this breakthrough comes well the other half of this
Jacob Paulsen: particular part of it let's assume then
Jacob Paulsen: that i i don't let i don't have
Jacob Paulsen: hold the gun so extraordinarily strongly that it's
Jacob Paulsen: flat but it just like it just recoils like it just whatever like
Jacob Paulsen: normal energy would exercise with a very lame
Jacob Paulsen: weak grip uh that it would you know come up and
Jacob Paulsen: slide would go to the rear and hits rears point then it starts to return forward with
Jacob Paulsen: the energy from the spring and comes with its most forward point goes into battery
Jacob Paulsen: in that scenario could i reset the trigger faster than the gun and recoils no
Jacob Paulsen: no so so it's like then if that's the case then then me shooting it flatter
Jacob Paulsen: than other other people can does not allow me to get the next shot any faster
Riley Bowman: Yes as far as that trigger pieces is.
Jacob Paulsen: Concerned yeah i mean side acquisition something else But I cannot reset the
Jacob Paulsen: trigger faster than the gun could recoil, even if it was flat.
Jacob Paulsen: So then it's sort of irrelevant then, right? Like there's some elapsed period
Jacob Paulsen: of time during which the gun's going to recoil.
Jacob Paulsen: And in that elapsed period of time, and it's a range depending on,
Jacob Paulsen: you know, arguably, you know, how strong you can hold it.
Jacob Paulsen: But it's kind of sort of not really a range either because the gun cycles,
Jacob Paulsen: the speed the gun cycles.
Jacob Paulsen: The question is, you know, how I'm holding it. So whatever, you could say it's
Jacob Paulsen: a range or you could say it's kind of really a finite period of time.
Jacob Paulsen: Whatever that that time is or range of time is i'm not resetting the trigger
Jacob Paulsen: fast yeah it's just not going to
Riley Bowman: Happen i mean well i mean to for those that are mathematically minded individuals
Riley Bowman: they like numbers uh this is just a rough ballpark okay because there's going
Riley Bowman: to yes uh recoil spring strength and you know or specific mass and the load
Riley Bowman: you're shooting and all that is going to be a factor in this,
Riley Bowman: but your typical handgun,
Riley Bowman: semi-automatic handgun is going to cycle or reciprocate.
Riley Bowman: So slide going back, slide coming back forward and into battery is going to
Riley Bowman: happen in about six hundredths, maybe seven hundredths of a second. Right.
Jacob Paulsen: And no one on earth is getting split times that fast.
Riley Bowman: Not with a pistol.
Jacob Paulsen: Like you can't outrun it. Like this is how some people describe this.
Jacob Paulsen: People say you can't outrun the gun, right?
Jacob Paulsen: You can't, your finger cannot move fast
Jacob Paulsen: enough to to press
Jacob Paulsen: the trigger faster than the gun can get back in the back yeah that's not
Jacob Paulsen: happening right i mean there are people out there who are cranking down sometimes
Jacob Paulsen: 0.10 0.11 0.12 you know that that's that's like unbelievable that's like bragging
Jacob Paulsen: right stuff right but i mean if you're the 0.14 0.15 0.16 we're like dang that
Jacob Paulsen: dude moves his finger pretty freaking fast right so so point point zero
Riley Bowman: Six yep so that's the point is that no matter like jerry who is well regarded
Riley Bowman: for having a very fast trigger finger i mean he's his fastest is typically point one oh yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah he's not out running the
Riley Bowman: Gun like when he's really burning it down so he's still you know 40 slower right
Riley Bowman: then that gun is cycling and.
Jacob Paulsen: I and i can't shoot before the trigger can reset
Jacob Paulsen: Right. And it's just not an option available to me. Like the gun has,
Jacob Paulsen: the trigger has to reset before I can fire the next shot.
Jacob Paulsen: So however long recoil takes, I know that my trigger reset will take longer.
Jacob Paulsen: So with that in mind, all of a sudden I start to ask myself like,
Jacob Paulsen: well, then why am I fighting the recoil?
Jacob Paulsen: Like what do I gain by experiencing less lift in the gun?
Jacob Paulsen: And the answer is probably near nothing.
Jacob Paulsen: I mean, there's a potential argument there that there is potential gain.
Jacob Paulsen: But sticking with my breakthrough from many years ago, the real moment this
Jacob Paulsen: really started to jive for me was more like 2020, 2021, 2022-ish.
Jacob Paulsen: It was like when this really started to hit hard for me.
Jacob Paulsen: And when those breakthroughs were coming...
Jacob Paulsen: And practically, for me, it was irrelevant how much recoil the gun had.
Jacob Paulsen: Here's the other half of understanding this, and I think that a lot of people
Jacob Paulsen: listening to this might be helpful.
Jacob Paulsen: You mentioned you sometimes have or that you would like to do more demos like
Jacob Paulsen: this, but in every class I teach, and I just taught one on Saturday, I do a demo.
Jacob Paulsen: And in this demo, I hold the gun with the least amount of purchase I can put
Jacob Paulsen: on a handgun, and I fire it.
Jacob Paulsen: And so you know usually that means my thumbs around the
Jacob Paulsen: back of the grip and my my trigger fingers on the trigger and my other three
Jacob Paulsen: fingers are not touching the gun at all yeah and i fire it yep i do this with
Jacob Paulsen: a nine millimeter handgun and uh i try and do it with a i usually do it with
Jacob Paulsen: a full-size gun a little heavier gun seems to help the demo a little bit but the point is illustrate
Jacob Paulsen: you know it's part of this concept we're talking about and and the key or what
Jacob Paulsen: i'm trying to communicate right now is for people who have never done this,
Jacob Paulsen: what would really surprise you, what surprises my students is how little recoil there is at all.
Jacob Paulsen: If you don't attempt to mitigate recoil at all, if you just allow it to completely
Jacob Paulsen: happen, like you put no reverse energy into the lift of the gun,
Jacob Paulsen: how high do you think it's going to lift?
Jacob Paulsen: And the answer is a lot less than you think.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's because we've all seen these YouTube videos of guns flying out of
Jacob Paulsen: people's hands and hitting them in the face or whatever.
Jacob Paulsen: And we love to share those videos and it's hilarious but in an actual practical
Jacob Paulsen: way if you just let the gun recoil it really doesn't lift that high
Jacob Paulsen: You do a drill in the PIQ course I took your course the first time I think in
Jacob Paulsen: It might have been 2023 or 2024. I can't remember now.
Jacob Paulsen: It doesn't matter. And when we first did this drill, this was really kind of
Jacob Paulsen: like, it was putting a lot of icing on the cake for me in this concept.
Jacob Paulsen: And you call it the recoil recalibration drill. And I'm not going to describe
Jacob Paulsen: it here on the podcast. People are going to watch the video.
Jacob Paulsen: But it was helping me understand that we just let it recoil.
Jacob Paulsen: And most shooters, by the way, can suck at this drill. It's hard to actually
Jacob Paulsen: allow yourself to let the gun just do the thing.
Jacob Paulsen: And so if you're listening to this, I would encourage you, Just see what happens
Jacob Paulsen: when you just let the gun lift.
Jacob Paulsen: Just let it do it. Let it take its natural course of movement.
Jacob Paulsen: And I think that you'd be shocked to be like, oh, it actually doesn't lift that much.
Jacob Paulsen: So all of a sudden, all this energy and mind power that I've been putting into
Jacob Paulsen: trying to keep the muzzle from rising, I'm really not doing hardly anything that matters.
Riley Bowman: No, you're spot on with that. And that's, I think, was it the recoil recalibration exercise that,
Riley Bowman: I remember when we had the Pistol IQ course filmed, there was a problem where
Riley Bowman: one of the drills or exercises got missed.
Riley Bowman: And as I told Corey, our video guy, Mike, we got to go back and we got to film that.
Riley Bowman: Like it has to be in the course. Like it's that critical, I think.
Riley Bowman: Without it, there's a lot of other things that just don't work or don't make sense.
Riley Bowman: And so i think i think it was that one i could be wrong but that's what seems
Riley Bowman: to be in there in my memory uh and so that is a really key thing yes pistol
Riley Bowman: intelligence course video you can go watch it online and you can see what we're
Riley Bowman: talking about and hopefully it starts to make some sense.
Riley Bowman: That's the reason why i do that is i have found in my experience so many shooters,
Riley Bowman: whether they've been trained this way or intuitively
Riley Bowman: they do this because first time you shoot a gun like ever you're like bang like
Riley Bowman: oh this thing kicks like this and so intuitively we want to go opposite to that
Riley Bowman: we want to push back against it we want to push down or whatever it is because you know.
Riley Bowman: We don't like the fact that it kicks. Nobody really does.
Riley Bowman: Uh, and so, I mean, if I was just to push you suddenly, Jacob,
Riley Bowman: I mean, you would, you'd be like, Oh, Hey dude, what was that about?
Riley Bowman: And then if I made the move, like I was going to do it again,
Riley Bowman: you would instantly change like something about your posture,
Riley Bowman: your behavior would change to counteract what I was going to do. Right.
Riley Bowman: And, and it's, that's kind of how recoil is. And so the problem with like,
Riley Bowman: what that leads to is that people get way more involved in trying to control the gun.
Riley Bowman: And we even hear the phrase recoil control.
Riley Bowman: That's actually the more popularized term that's used in shooting is recoil control.
Riley Bowman: And you'll note that over the years, especially the last five,
Riley Bowman: six, seven years, I've been a lot more careful.
Riley Bowman: I've moved away from recoil control. And I say recoil management because it's
Riley Bowman: all just about managing that recoil.
Riley Bowman: I am not trying to control it necessarily.
Riley Bowman: I mean, you make this observation in the article that the gun itself.
Riley Bowman: And of course you've seen me demonstrate this in class and talk about it in
Riley Bowman: class, and it's in the Pistol IQ online video course.
Riley Bowman: But one of the ways I demonstrate this is I'll take a pistol,
Riley Bowman: an empty gun, lock the slide to the rear, I'll hold it in a slightly elevated,
Riley Bowman: you know kind of like a simulated this is about where it would be if it recoiled
Riley Bowman: in my hands during a shot and now let me just close the slide and i close the
Riley Bowman: slide and what you see is that the energy from that slide when it comes forward
Riley Bowman: and then it close and it completes that action you'll see it has this momentum
Riley Bowman: to it and it carries the gun back forward and down,
Riley Bowman: towards the direction it would have originated from during firing right and
Riley Bowman: so i demonstrate that because.
Riley Bowman: I want to make the point. I want people to see that the gun by itself,
Riley Bowman: and we're talking about semi-automatics here, not revolvers.
Riley Bowman: Revolvers are a different animal.
Riley Bowman: Although some of the principles will be the same, there are some distinct differences
Riley Bowman: for sure because a revolver doesn't have any part of the gun that's reciprocating, right?
Riley Bowman: So all the recoil energy is going directly into your hands, into your body.
Riley Bowman: But most people are shooting semi-automatics. Most people are carrying semi-automatics
Riley Bowman: in today's world. So that's what we're mostly concerned about here today.
Riley Bowman: So we want to just make the point that when the gun recoils and that slide starts
Riley Bowman: moving to the rear, it's taking some of the energy and storing it in the recoil spring.
Riley Bowman: And then it's releasing that energy when that recoil spring sends a slide back forward.
Riley Bowman: And when that slide goes back forward, it's going to help bring the gun back forward and down.
Riley Bowman: It's not going to do, it's not going to, you know, you have a hundred percent
Riley Bowman: of whatever energy that comes back and up.
Riley Bowman: It's not going to give quite a hundred percent back, but it's going to do 70%,
Riley Bowman: 80%. I don't know what it is.
Jacob Paulsen: It's lost or absorbed.
Riley Bowman: But when people see that, they
Riley Bowman: go, oh, so the gun itself will do a lot of this work on its own for me.
Jacob Paulsen: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Riley Bowman: And so let's not try to complicate it any more than that.
Riley Bowman: We want to only do just enough, whatever that is, to get the gun back on target.
Riley Bowman: And preferably my preference is to not try
Riley Bowman: to preemptively or let me back up
Riley Bowman: i don't want to preempt that recoil meaning that
Riley Bowman: as i'm firing the gun i start immediately pushing you know forward and down
Riley Bowman: to counter the recoil no i just want to have enough pressure on the gun and
Riley Bowman: have the structure built in how i'm gripping and how i'm standing that helps
Riley Bowman: bring it back it helps give it that extra little bit of input.
Riley Bowman: And that's, that's what we're talking about when we talk about passive recoil
Riley Bowman: management is that we passively, you know, we allow the gun to do as much of the work as we can.
Jacob Paulsen: I mean, there's two other factors that play into this that I left out of the
Jacob Paulsen: article because I thought I might make them future articles.
Jacob Paulsen: But I think to kind of continue this and like bring it full circle,
Jacob Paulsen: I remember the moment I started to have this mental conflict.
Jacob Paulsen: As I was working through this in my mind, this is many years ago now,
Jacob Paulsen: and I was working through this concept. I'm like, wait a minute.
Jacob Paulsen: Because if I just let it kick, as Rob Latham says,
Jacob Paulsen: if I acknowledge that I can't reset the trigger faster than recoil happens anyway,
Jacob Paulsen: so why am i working so hard to prevent recoil if
Jacob Paulsen: i just let it take its natural motion then wait
Jacob Paulsen: a minute like everything i've been taught about shooting
Jacob Paulsen: was designed to help me stop the recoil
Jacob Paulsen: from happening so is everything i've been taught wrong
Jacob Paulsen: right like the way we grip the gun and now pinky pressure and like you know
Jacob Paulsen: higher up on the phone you know near the fulcrum of rotation and you know stand
Jacob Paulsen: like this and absorbing the energy and like all these things i was like man
Jacob Paulsen: like all of my shooting instruction in my life seems like,
Jacob Paulsen: and this is my own perspective,
Jacob Paulsen: seems like it was trying to teach me how to prevent recoil from happening,
Jacob Paulsen: how to mitigate the action of the muzzle lifting up in the air.
Jacob Paulsen: And so if I'm going to accept this truth for myself, that I actually don't care
Jacob Paulsen: if the muzzle lifts at all, that I'm just going to stop trying to stop that
Jacob Paulsen: from happening, then wait a minute, like, then why, what, then everything I've
Jacob Paulsen: been taught doesn't matter? That can't be true.
Jacob Paulsen: And so that, I guess as I was working through that and trying to understand
Jacob Paulsen: that, I can't remember what happened, but, but the revelation came, right?
Jacob Paulsen: I probably, I was in a class or interviewing somebody or listening to an episode
Jacob Paulsen: or I don't know what the thing was, but the, but the revelation came that was like, no, no, no,
Jacob Paulsen: What we're missing here is that as farm instructors, we've done a massive disservice
Jacob Paulsen: because we teach people all these things under the guise that recoil is bad
Jacob Paulsen: and that we need to stop that recoil.
Jacob Paulsen: That it is not good and it's your job to keep it from happening and the more
Jacob Paulsen: you keep it from happening, the better you are.
Jacob Paulsen: And that's really not true. And so the shift happened for me when I realized
Jacob Paulsen: all those fundamentals are still important, the grip, the trigger, the aiming,
Jacob Paulsen: the structure, stance, whatever people want to call it.
Jacob Paulsen: All that still matters, but not because we're trying to mitigate the rise of the muzzle.
Jacob Paulsen: It's because like all of that stuff is designed to create a consistent and and
Jacob Paulsen: relatively speedy return to the same point of aim
Riley Bowman: Yeah what i like to say is that you know if if your technique and your strength
Riley Bowman: allows you to minimize the rise of the muzzle during recoil like more power
Riley Bowman: to you like that's not a bad thing it certainly shortcuts.
Jacob Paulsen: The the objective
Riley Bowman: It certainly can be a bonus
Riley Bowman: in shooting however it's not the end all
Riley Bowman: be all and so for a long time that was it was
Riley Bowman: the end all be all for me like i was just convinced i'm like i'm just gonna
Riley Bowman: be a better shooter if i can just manage to get this gun to be flatter and flatter
Riley Bowman: and flatter uh but to your point what i ultimately had to come around to to
Riley Bowman: understand and to see was that it's far more important that the gun,
Riley Bowman: consistently lifts, you know, after a shot's fired, lifts and then returns back to that target,
Riley Bowman: As you said, it's got to be in a relatively speedy fashion, but really, I mean.
Jacob Paulsen: It's predictability, it's consistency, and efficiency of movement.
Jacob Paulsen: In other words, a straight pattern, that's really what matters.
Riley Bowman: Here's the thing. The gun cycles we just established in like .06, right? Yep.
Riley Bowman: If it goes straight up and straight back down, that's very efficient. Gold.
Riley Bowman: It's up, it's down. Like that's about as efficient as it can be is back,
Riley Bowman: back and up and forward and down. Boom, boom. Okay.
Riley Bowman: If it does that. All right. And if it does that in 0.06, 0.08.
Riley Bowman: Okay. Then the degree or the amount that it lifts, it's, it's going to be plenty speedy enough.
Jacob Paulsen: It doesn't matter. Yeah. It could be, it could be doubles. It could be twice
Jacob Paulsen: as slow. It could be 0.06 times two. It could be 0.12.
Jacob Paulsen: And it still wouldn't impact how quickly I could shoot. to, at least in theory,
Jacob Paulsen: I guess it depends on how good my vision is, or how fast my,
Jacob Paulsen: if I'm Jerry Michalik style.
Jacob Paulsen: But the key is this consistent, predictable, and most efficient path of recoil.
Jacob Paulsen: So the things I'm doing about gripping my gun, where I previously thought I
Jacob Paulsen: was trying to make the gun shoot flatter and not let the muzzle come up,
Jacob Paulsen: now the current understanding is, no, no, no, no, no.
Jacob Paulsen: The things I'm, like, the inputs
Jacob Paulsen: I'm applying to this gun are about this consistent path of movement. Yes.
Jacob Paulsen: And then my stance and my structure, my arms and elbows and shoulders,
Jacob Paulsen: all that is about return to the same point. Yep.
Riley Bowman: Exactly. Because if you were to analyze, you know, if you had like perfect awareness
Riley Bowman: of the movement of your gun from shot to shot, let's say, okay,
Riley Bowman: what you'll see from a lot of shooters is they get the gun lined up on target.
Riley Bowman: Okay. Sights look good. Target looks good. Okay. Send the shot. Bang.
Riley Bowman: Shot fires. Gun recoils. Almost always it's going to, that initial lift is going to be straight up.
Riley Bowman: Okay. Now we could put some different torques and things into it.
Riley Bowman: It might be a little bit different than that, but it's almost always going to be pretty straight up.
Riley Bowman: But what happens after that is really what's key because then
Riley Bowman: what we see is that then the shooter starts putting inputs into the gun
Riley Bowman: and and it you know so let's let me give you
Riley Bowman: a couple different scenarios that i think are pretty common one is
Riley Bowman: the gun starts recovering back to the target but because they are over what
Riley Bowman: i like to call over driving the gun meaning they're putting way more input into
Riley Bowman: it than they need to just in terms of that trying to control that up and back
Riley Bowman: motion they end up pushing the gun and the sights like there's this there's
Riley Bowman: a target they're they're They're waiting for the sights to come back.
Riley Bowman: But what happens is the sight comes back and goes through the target and down.
Riley Bowman: And then they have to wait for that. Then they have to make another correction
Riley Bowman: of, well, it went over the target, went beyond, and now I have to bring it back.
Riley Bowman: And that leads to almost like this oscillation of like, where's the sight? Oh, there it is.
Riley Bowman: Another thing is that they put a lot of inputs into the gun that creates little
Riley Bowman: curly cues and little swirls and different things.
Riley Bowman: And so gun recoils up and then comes back. and when it comes back to the target
Riley Bowman: then it's starting to kind of sway around a little bit.
Jacob Paulsen: That's a failure of the fundamentals. Right. Like you have a technique problem
Jacob Paulsen: if that's happening to you.
Riley Bowman: Yep.
Jacob Paulsen: But
Jacob Paulsen: sometimes we are our own worst enemies like our attempt to put more muscle mass
Jacob Paulsen: more energy more strength to prevent muzzle lift is what causes it to you know
Jacob Paulsen: go in weird angles or correct right yes so
Riley Bowman: Then what does that lead to that's where the time suck.
Jacob Paulsen: Comes big time because
Riley Bowman: Now you're like well my sight was there when i you know i fired that last shot
Riley Bowman: but now it comes back and where is it.
Jacob Paulsen: Oh there it is yeah yeah the speed at which you can like
Jacob Paulsen: i do a drill i do an exercise um it's the
Jacob Paulsen: last thing i do in my standard basic handgun classes
Jacob Paulsen: you know if you go take my eight hour you know get your permit in colorado class
Jacob Paulsen: the last thing i'll have you do and and for some context throughout the entire
Jacob Paulsen: class and we're on the range for four hours in that class eight for four hours
Jacob Paulsen: classroom four hours on the range so you're on the range for me with four hours
Jacob Paulsen: and during those four hours nothing is time nothing is even under pressure I always say,
Jacob Paulsen: take your time, shoot at your own pace, and we do whatever the exercise is.
Jacob Paulsen: But the last exercise, the instructions are as follows.
Jacob Paulsen: We're, you know, use the same target zone. We're, for the first time and only
Jacob Paulsen: time today at the class, I'm going to encourage you to go as fast as you can.
Jacob Paulsen: However, you may not fire a shot until you've acquired sights and confirmed
Jacob Paulsen: the sight picture, and then you can send the shot.
Jacob Paulsen: But do that as fast as you can. I want you to fire five shots as fast as you
Jacob Paulsen: can, but every shot has to be perfectly aimed.
Jacob Paulsen: And, you know, go kind of thing. And this is where we find out how consistent
Jacob Paulsen: your control of the recoil is.
Jacob Paulsen: Because, you know, when you go bang and that gun comes back and you have to
Jacob Paulsen: search for your sight, reacquire, realign, and then go bang again,
Jacob Paulsen: that tells us that your fundamentals are not executing in a way that provides
Jacob Paulsen: you the end objective and goal.
Jacob Paulsen: It has nothing to do with how much lift there is. It has nothing to do...
Jacob Paulsen: To a great degree with how much strength you input into the gun.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Yeah. So that's why that recoil reprogramming exercise is, I think, so key.
Riley Bowman: I think it's helpful for most students is to help them understand,
Riley Bowman: like, we want to minimize our inputs into the gun because by minimizing inputs,
Riley Bowman: then we actually help minimize the variables that can steer us off course.
Riley Bowman: Because if we can get the gun to behave just as
Riley Bowman: a gun as much as it can on its own and then
Riley Bowman: we just give the minimal whatever extra required
Riley Bowman: then there's less likelihood that we introduce
Riley Bowman: these other things that are going to you know overdrive or or you know take
Riley Bowman: us to the left or to the right or in a swirl or whatever uh because ultimately
Riley Bowman: we just want straight up straight back down straight up straight back down and
Riley Bowman: right back to the starting point not beyond it not below it and that's that's that's the key how.
Jacob Paulsen: Are we doing on time because i gotta decide if i'm I'm going to inject another
Jacob Paulsen: thought here. No. Yeah, no, we have time. So I'm going to inject another thought.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, let's do it.
Jacob Paulsen: And this is not in the article, but part of the very beginning of this journey
Jacob Paulsen: for me, and again, this is me writing an article today about a breakthrough
Jacob Paulsen: that I really had like four or five years ago.
Jacob Paulsen: So I'm trying to provide that context. It's not about my ego.
Jacob Paulsen: If I just had this breakthrough last week, that'd be fine by me.
Jacob Paulsen: And to be clear, I don't think I invented this concept. And I try and say as much as the article,
Jacob Paulsen: I think anybody who shoots enough and over time is going
Jacob Paulsen: to figure this out yeah yeah for sure and anybody who's shooting at a decently
Jacob Paulsen: high level performance has figured this out yep but part of part of this for
Jacob Paulsen: me had everything to do with anticipation so uh i'll give you another example
Jacob Paulsen: i'm at i'm in a class rule this might be 2019 or 2020.
Jacob Paulsen: And we're basically doing build drills. And at that time,
Jacob Paulsen: I believed falsely that doing
Jacob Paulsen: a good build drill came down to getting one good sight picture and then gripping
Jacob Paulsen: the snot out of that gun so hard and so tight and so strong and with limiting
Jacob Paulsen: recoil so much that you just sent the next five and they would just go in the
Jacob Paulsen: same place. That's what I believed.
Riley Bowman: Yeah, you'd see your sight once.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, and then just let it rip six times.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. Like, so in other words, you're not seeing the dot or sights for shots two through six.
Jacob Paulsen: Correct. That's what I thought was done. Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Jacob Paulsen: I thought that's what good shooters did.
Riley Bowman: Nope.
Jacob Paulsen: I'm not embarrassed. Like, that's just what I thought that was happening.
Jacob Paulsen: I didn't think at the time it was possible to see your sights at that rate of
Jacob Paulsen: speed that I saw shooters shooting.
Jacob Paulsen: Right? When someone's cooking off a bill drill with splits that are 0.15 and
Jacob Paulsen: a 0.75 draw, they're cooking something out in the two-second range or under two-second range,
Jacob Paulsen: it was hard for me at that time to look at that and think, you're seeing your
Jacob Paulsen: sights every time? I don't buy it.
Jacob Paulsen: Because I didn't think that was true, I assumed that the only mechanism to do
Jacob Paulsen: this with any sort of efficiency and speed was see it once,
Jacob Paulsen: lock it in let it rip and um
Jacob Paulsen: i remember being basically embarrassed in the
Jacob Paulsen: class because that's what i did and my
Jacob Paulsen: sights were all over the tar or my my holes were all over the target i was like
Jacob Paulsen: that was terrible um but it was like a break in my brain i was like wait a minute
Jacob Paulsen: but like the two things cannot both be true right like so so i just assumed
Jacob Paulsen: like well i gotta get stronger i guess and grip the gun harder i'm never gonna
Jacob Paulsen: be able to get a two three even maybe sub four second Yeah,
Jacob Paulsen: I didn't get right in that four second without doing too much special.
Jacob Paulsen: But anyway, I just thought, you know, I guess I'm just going to be able to do
Jacob Paulsen: it unless I go get tougher and stronger. Yeah.
Jacob Paulsen: But then here's another breakthrough. This is all going to come together.
Jacob Paulsen: We were doing the hex drill.
Jacob Paulsen: It's been a while since you probably shot a hex drill.
Riley Bowman: It has been a while.
Jacob Paulsen: And this is the one time, and this is why I remember it so well,
Jacob Paulsen: that you and I both performed the same thing at the same time in a class, and I beat you.
Jacob Paulsen: We were two in an instructor development class up here in Colorado.
Jacob Paulsen: We had three or four students in it.
Jacob Paulsen: And we were doing a stationary hex drill. I don't remember. We had a name for that.
Jacob Paulsen: Like basic hex drill or something but it's basically a stationary hex drill
Jacob Paulsen: you just remove the movement but it's a it's a
Jacob Paulsen: lot of cadence of fire in this drill where you you know
Jacob Paulsen: you're you getting a two inch uh diameter circle
Jacob Paulsen: you have to fire on that circle and then you come back and you put in
Jacob Paulsen: body shots and so you know obviously you're going much faster in the body
Jacob Paulsen: shots and you gotta slow down and you have to be a lot more precise in order
Jacob Paulsen: to hit these these smaller targets and so you asked me to demo it so i step
Jacob Paulsen: up to the line and i decided that the only way i was going to get these precise
Jacob Paulsen: shots in an efficient time was if I just told myself to let it recoil.
Jacob Paulsen: I was like, because anything I do to fight the recoil will almost certainly
Jacob Paulsen: cause me to miss the target.
Jacob Paulsen: Which is an anticipation issue, right? And I just knew this of myself.
Jacob Paulsen: This is Jacob trying to loophole his own deficiency.
Jacob Paulsen: I was trying to cheat, right? I'm like, I was acknowledging that I know I anticipate.
Jacob Paulsen: And because I anticipate, I miss. And that doesn't matter in these body shots.
Jacob Paulsen: So I'll just anticipate.
Jacob Paulsen: I'll just drive it faster. And I know I'll anticipate when I shoot that fast, but whatever.
Jacob Paulsen: But in these little two-inch circles, if I'm going to do this with any speed
Jacob Paulsen: or efficiency, I can't anticipate like I have to be, it requires a greater degree of precision to do it.
Jacob Paulsen: So I, in my head in that moment, I was like, well, what I'm going to try to
Jacob Paulsen: do is just let it recoil. Like in my brain, I'm just going to think,
Jacob Paulsen: let it go. Just let it, just let it, let it kick, whatever.
Jacob Paulsen: And then when I go back to the body shots, you know, I'll just,
Jacob Paulsen: then, then I'll, then I'll worry about recoil. Cause you know, I got to move faster.
Jacob Paulsen: So this was not a very accurate perception of how to do this.
Jacob Paulsen: So I'm not recommending anybody think about this, this at all the way I thought
Jacob Paulsen: about it at the time. however it led to success in in these precise shots and
Jacob Paulsen: it was a moment it was a breakthrough for me where i'm like wait a minute like
Jacob Paulsen: that worked, right? Like I nailed every one of those flawlessly. Like I crushed it,
Riley Bowman: Right?
Jacob Paulsen: And like that, that stuck in my brain, right?
Jacob Paulsen: Like in this way, it's like, wait a minute, like I can hit these precise shots when I need to.
Jacob Paulsen: I do a demo now. I do a sight forgiveness drill in every one of my classes and
Jacob Paulsen: I do it on a one inch square.
Jacob Paulsen: And I always hit the one inch square, always. And I usually do it from either
Jacob Paulsen: five or seven yards, depending on the class and the way set up.
Jacob Paulsen: But that's something I would have been incapable of doing with any consistency back in 2019, 2018.
Jacob Paulsen: But today, I don't hesitate to think cold without having fired a shot yet today,
Jacob Paulsen: I can draw my gun and given two seconds, I can hit a one-inch square five or seven yards.
Jacob Paulsen: And that comes down to what? These principles at play.
Jacob Paulsen: Like me saying, the way I solved my anticipation issue was by deciding that
Jacob Paulsen: recoil was perfectly acceptable. And it's fine.
Jacob Paulsen: It's okay. And just the acceptance of recoil as an acceptable thing that I do
Jacob Paulsen: not have to fight or stop or mitigate at all,
Jacob Paulsen: in the brain, if that truly lives in there deeply, then the brain says,
Jacob Paulsen: okay, then why are we fighting it?
Jacob Paulsen: We're not. Okay, we're not going to fight it? Okay, then you're not going to
Jacob Paulsen: anticipate the shot at all.
Riley Bowman: Well, that's, and that's, you hear me say that in, uh, when we do the recoil
Riley Bowman: reprogramming exercises in my classes, uh, I say basically, you know,
Riley Bowman: if you do this first part of that exercise correctly,
Riley Bowman: which is all about teaching the student to allow the gun to just kick,
Riley Bowman: then you cannot anticipate.
Jacob Paulsen: No.
Riley Bowman: Right. Because, I mean, it just, it's the antithesis of that, right? Yeah.
Riley Bowman: That, you know, I let it kick. Therefore, I am not doing anything to try to preempt it.
Riley Bowman: So I cannot possibly anticipate it. And so many people have struggles with anticipation.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. You have. I have.
Jacob Paulsen: I think every shooter. Like 90 plus, 98%. Every male shooter.
Jacob Paulsen: I've met some women that seem to have, like, just their pickup guns for the
Jacob Paulsen: first time and they just don't anticipate. But us dudes, like,
Jacob Paulsen: we all just are going to anticipate it sometime.
Riley Bowman: So it's so freeing. And it's how it was for me to kind of get over that hump.
Riley Bowman: And like you just described your own experience with, of being like,
Riley Bowman: you know what, uh, the gun's going to kick no matter what.
Riley Bowman: And yes, I can do certain things that minimizes that, but if I just accept it,
Riley Bowman: uh, and then just focus, put all my effort into getting the gun to just be as
Riley Bowman: consistent as possible from shot to shot.
Riley Bowman: Cause that, that was the big thing for me was just realizing that,
Riley Bowman: Hey, it doesn't matter how much it lifts in recoil but if it comes right back
Riley Bowman: to where i'm trying to hit yes the target yep on that next shot bingo then and
Riley Bowman: my finger's ready meaning that i have reset the trigger during that time then
Riley Bowman: it's like bam ready to go again yep you know in.
Jacob Paulsen: The article there's a gif is that what we call it gif gif i don't know a gif
Jacob Paulsen: file type image um and this is of me running a uspsa style stage at the ASP
Jacob Paulsen: conference and I think 2023.
Riley Bowman: Sounds about right.
Jacob Paulsen: And when I was writing this article, I was trying to find an image,
Jacob Paulsen: a video that I could use to kind of illustrate this.
Jacob Paulsen: And I really like this particular GIF because you can see my muzzle very clearly.
Jacob Paulsen: And you can see it has rise, like undeniable rise, like whoop,
Riley Bowman: Whoop, like up, up.
Jacob Paulsen: Up, up kind of thing. But it also is highly consistent.
Jacob Paulsen: I'm putting two shots in each target. There's an array of three targets that you see in this GIF.
Jacob Paulsen: And so it's sort of like you know bang bang shift you know transition bang bang transition bang bang
Jacob Paulsen: and in hindsight i probably should have been the opposite order but it doesn't
Jacob Paulsen: matter for the purpose of this article perfectly yeah the purpose
Jacob Paulsen: of this article you you're seeing exactly what
Jacob Paulsen: i'm talking about in this in this little animated video like
Jacob Paulsen: you see that it is absolutely recoiling because i am not trying to spite it
Jacob Paulsen: at all like i am perfectly accepting of the recoil like it's cool man this is
Jacob Paulsen: a glock 19 in this video and i'm just like do it man like do your thing like
Jacob Paulsen: i love you and just recoil all you want to i am sorry i've been fighting you on this all these years
Jacob Paulsen: have a good time yeah and then come back to me and and you know boom it just
Jacob Paulsen: comes back for me right away right to where i left off so i'm not saying i don't
Jacob Paulsen: have to i have so many other shooting deficiencies for sure nor am i saying
Jacob Paulsen: that i got this completely 100 locked down and I never have a problem with it
Jacob Paulsen: because that's not true either.
Jacob Paulsen: But yeah, major breakthrough. Yeah.
Riley Bowman: So if we were to sum this all up, I mean, there's a number of things we could
Riley Bowman: probably say, but just from where you ended there and using this GIF image as an example,
Riley Bowman: instead of putting emphasis, you guys, you shooters, all of us,
Riley Bowman: on how much the gun moves or lifts during recoil, change our focus,
Riley Bowman: our emphasis to where the gun stops when it comes back post-recoil.
Riley Bowman: That's really like the thing that sets you up to be able to shoot better and
Riley Bowman: faster because if the gun comes right back to where you want it where you need
Riley Bowman: it where you're looking where you're aiming,
Riley Bowman: Or shots two, shots three, four, five, six.
Riley Bowman: And you're doing everything else correctly. Like you should see that moment
Riley Bowman: that it happens, meaning that now your dot or your sight's right back where
Riley Bowman: you're expecting it to be.
Riley Bowman: And at that point, like there's nothing else that you need to do other than reset the trigger.
Jacob Paulsen: Everything else is irrelevant.
Riley Bowman: Right? Yeah, yeah. You know, and so like you can shoot as fast as you,
Riley Bowman: as fast as you can get that sight to come right back to where you're looking.
Riley Bowman: Is your limiting factor to how fast you can shoot.
Jacob Paulsen: What does John say? John Cree, I think, says the sights are the gas pedal or something like that?
Riley Bowman: Yeah. It's about gas pedals. Its grip is the master.
Riley Bowman: Sights are the, hold on. The speedometer.
Jacob Paulsen: Something like this.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. It's a good saying. I like it.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah. We'd sound really intelligent if we could remember it.
Jacob Paulsen: But that's, yes, like that's, like it's not about how much muzzle lift you have.
Jacob Paulsen: It really doesn't matter maybe it
Jacob Paulsen: doesn't make you look as cool on Instagram but I'm okay with that like I have
Jacob Paulsen: no issue with it at all what is relevant is the speed at which I can reacquire
Jacob Paulsen: sight picture and that's not probably going to be influenced by how limited my muzzle lift is yeah
Riley Bowman: That's excellent. Uh, I'm just looking through a couple of other notes I had
Riley Bowman: here and I mean, we're kind of at the, at time here, but, uh,
Riley Bowman: I think, I think we hit it pretty good there.
Riley Bowman: I appreciate you sharing your perspective on this. Uh, I think,
Riley Bowman: I mean, this was helpful for me to realize these, you know, you and I have been
Riley Bowman: at some different points of our journeys, but yeah, you know,
Riley Bowman: you're sharing a lot of same aha moments that I had just at different,
Riley Bowman: timeframes. Sure. You know, in our own journeys.
Riley Bowman: And it feels really good to hear you, you know, share some of your takeaways.
Riley Bowman: As you mentioned, you started to understand some of these things a while ago,
Riley Bowman: but what was the big thing recently was that language of active recoil management
Riley Bowman: versus passive recoil management.
Jacob Paulsen: Yeah, that gave me a vernacular I felt I could use to describe this thing that
Jacob Paulsen: I didn't know otherwise how to describe well.
Riley Bowman: Yeah. And I think to kind of sum that up here uh since passive recoil management's
Riley Bowman: in the title of the podcast episode even is that active recoil management is
Riley Bowman: what the person who's trying to control the recoil is doing.
Jacob Paulsen: Mitigate lift yeah
Riley Bowman: Whereas passive recoil management is you let the gun do everything that you
Riley Bowman: can get it to do on its own and you you just give it whatever extra it needs
Riley Bowman: beyond that like but nothing nothing more nothing no more no less you just let
Riley Bowman: the gun do its thing and then you just learn to give it,
Riley Bowman: minimal amount that gets it to where you need it to be. And that's what we do
Riley Bowman: in that recoil reprogramming exercise, which I think is so helpful.
Riley Bowman: So again, as we mentioned in the beginning of the episode, one of the sponsors
Riley Bowman: of this episode is the Pistol Intelligence online video course,
Riley Bowman: which you can see so much of this in work, in practice.
Riley Bowman: That video course was filmed in a live class.
Riley Bowman: In fact, you mentioned the Active Self-Protection crew john korea and a number
Riley Bowman: of their team were in attendance in that that class effective given full credit
Riley Bowman: they ultimately are the ones that filmed that they brought that course and gave
Riley Bowman: us you know the rights to be able to also do our own edits and and put that up on our site as well.
Riley Bowman: And that's where you know i said there was something that got missed and uh
Riley Bowman: so corey and i had to get to the range and film that because i just like yeah
Riley Bowman: this can't be missing it's got to be in there it's got to be a part of this
Riley Bowman: uh but ultimately it's a great course and you can see Again,
Riley Bowman: you can hear me explain all this stuff, teach this stuff,
Riley Bowman: see it demoed, see other students on the line as they are experimenting and
Riley Bowman: trying and learning the things that we teach in the Pistol Intelligence course.
Riley Bowman: And that's all right there for you to watch in the comfort of your own home.
Riley Bowman: Plus a workbook is part of that.
Riley Bowman: So you can follow along. You can review things.
Riley Bowman: You can take things to the range and try the different drills and things that
Riley Bowman: we cover in that curriculum on your own.
Riley Bowman: Obviously it's even more effective when you
Riley Bowman: can attend a class in person uh which you know i'd
Riley Bowman: love to be able to see you in one of my classes in the future but the
Riley Bowman: video course i think is pretty excellent in being able to communicate the the
Riley Bowman: core concepts of the of the curriculum yeah so concealed carry.com forward slash
Riley Bowman: piq course the link for that and then again we want to make sure we recognize
Riley Bowman: our other main episode sponsor today of course they're a title sponsor of the episode, and that is HK.
Riley Bowman: And we appreciate them so much and hope that you'll consider for your next gun
Riley Bowman: an HK pistol or rifle or whatever.
Riley Bowman: Head on over to hk-usa.com to learn more.
Riley Bowman: Anything else, Jacob?
Jacob Paulsen: No, I think that's a wrap.
Riley Bowman: Awesome. So with that, we'll leave you guys to go. Before we do,
Riley Bowman: please like, subscribe, share, comment, anything you could do to interact with
Riley Bowman: and help share and spread the word about the podcast.
Riley Bowman: And our mission here at concealedcarry.com is greatly appreciated.
Riley Bowman: It helps us a lot. It helps us tremendously. It allows us to keep doing what
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Riley Bowman: and help share and spread the word.
Riley Bowman: So with that, a reminder to train right, train often, and train safe so you can fight hard.
Jacob Paulsen: Fight fast, and fight true. Take care.
Riley Bowman: Take care, everybody.
Riley Bowman: A reminder that laws vary from place to place, and we encourage listeners to
Riley Bowman: seek local legal advice to understand applicable laws.
Riley Bowman: Concealed Carry, Inc., its brands and properties, and the Concealed Carry podcast
Riley Bowman: is not a legal service, nor are we attorneys at law.
Riley Bowman: We make our best faith effort to share Concealed Carry-related insights and
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Riley Bowman: based on our own understanding and experience.
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Riley Bowman: time you listen to this. We cannot be held liable for your actions based on
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