Barrel Weight and Wrist Weights

The discussion on barrel weights brought out a question...

When I bought my Hammerli .22 I was told that adding barrel weight would help with wobble. I tried it and found it to be true for me. My gun now has a barrel weight.

I have been practicing and dry-firing with a wrist weight (1.5 pounds) on the theory that practice that is more difficult than match conditions makes for better training.

I think that the wrist weight is affecting my practice scores negatively (its training so I don't care as long as it helps my match scores). I'm wondering, however, if the wrist weight is actually further reducing wobble - leading to higher training scores - and negatively impacting match performance - as in the match there is actually more wobble than in my training.

(Been in two matches - May 51%, August 84% - so I know I am improving...)

Any comments or ideas?

Thanks.

Scott

I wouldn't want to shoot with a wrist weight. It will dampen recoil and give you improper feedback. It would be ok to dry fire with it to build up tone in the supporting muscles used to hold the gun up.

Scott:



At this point in your shooting the best thing to reduced your woble and become

steadier is to shoot as many matches as you can. When going to a match is just another day

and not something special you will be be able to be much steadier. IMHO shooting a match

is better than 4 times as many training sesions. Learning to deal with match stress is a

large part of the game.



Dave C.

I used a wrist weight for dry firing and it helped initially- I think by building strength. Later on, I found it detrimental. I think what was happening was my muscles became used to an increased mass and pushed harder to reaquire a zero as the sights moved off. Then, when I actually fired with a resulting lighter mass (from not having the weight on), my muscles over-reacted when reacquiring zero, making my hold very jerky.

In my 20s, I shot my HS bull barrel with a homemade 6oz weight under the barrel. I am thinking of going back to that.

I put the weight back on my 1911/38. It looks great on my avatar.