- [Voiceover] Gun talk is brought to you by
Black Hills Ammunition,
Springfield Armory,
and Sig Sauer.
(gun fires)
- One of the places where recoil is really important
is when you wanna shoot fast.
And if you wanna talk about shooting fast,
you talk with Max Michel.
That's your specialty man.
- I appreciate it Tom, you bet.
- Alright so you brought some of your guns,
some of your ammo.
Let's look at what you have
'cause you got three different guns.
What three different types of events?
- Exactly in my sport, i'm a pistol guy
but there's so many different divisons
and competitions you can compete within.
And you have to have the optimal equipment
for each one of those divisions.
- Alright, walk me through what you got here.
- Right so what we have first is our Sig Sauer P320.
This would be equivalent to the production division.
And in the production division
it has to be pretty much a stock gun.
(gun fires)
- Alright, so that's for one type of shooting.
- Exactly.
- Alright let's go start on the other end over here.
- This is our Sig Sauer 1911 MAX.
- [Tom] The Max, as in you. - [Max] As in Max.
So this is the model I designed a couple years ago.
I'm extremely excited about it obviously.
It's the perfect gun, because it's my gun.
- Of course [laughing].
Okay now what do you have here that helps with recoil?
- Right so with recoil what you're gonna see is
here because we don't have a bull-barrel,
what I did is I put in a guide rod system there.
The gun has to make weight, okay?
So you can't go too heavy with
a tungsten guide rod or anything like that.
But I did put a guide rod in that allows me
to still make weight but put a little bit
of weight on the end of the muzzle there.
But more importantly the grip choice that I went with.
So as far as the grip goes
I have a very aggressive traction on the grip.
Whether it be the checkering or the grip itself.
And the reason why that is,
is just to enhance the grip in my hand,
so that way when I'm shooting at a high-rate of speed,
the gun will flip less in my hand.
- That's .45
- That is.
- Now, this one.
- So this one here is again a Sig Sauer model.
It's a custom model.
Specifically built for me.
It's essentially the 1911 MAX lower.
And what we've done is we've changed the top-end completely.
So now we went from .45 to .38 Super.
- .38 Super is just a slightly longer case,
a little bit more pressure, but with a comp.
you're able to jet that gas out, it keeps the muzzle down?
- Exactly, so the cool thing about a compensator Tom,
is what happens is as the round leaves the barrel,
the gases are not just following
that round out of the chamber.
What's happening is the baffles in the compensator
is actually jetting the forces upwards.
So essentially what's happening is
the guns trying to lift up and back and recoil.
As the gases are coming through the chamber,
it's pushing forward on the baffles
and down into the compensator which is making it lift less.
It's not allowing it to lift as high as it wants to.
- So obviously this is a speed rig.
Now you do a demo where you have three targets up
and shoot like six, six and six?
- Yeah I call it triple six Tom.
Six rounds on one target, reload,
six rounds on another target, reload.
And six rounds on a final target.
So 18 rounds, a draw, two reloads.
Lot's of things happening there.
Mostly recoil management process.
- I know you do it with this
but you also do it with this gun.
This is pretty much a stock, out of a box gun.
So if you're gonna show me, how to hold onto that gun
to manage recoil, what am I needing to learn?
- So basically what I'm looking for
is taking the web of my firing hand
and placing it as high as possible
on the back-strap of the pistol.
Then just in front of that middle knuckle
it's gonna go underneath the trigger guard, just like so.
Now you notice that I keep my thumb up high there.
A lot of folks like to rest their thumb down low.
What happens there, as you do that
it gives your support hand no room to get in there.
So I need my thumb to stay up high
'cause the most important part of the two handed grip
when you don't have these compensators,
is your support hand.
And that's acting as your compensator
is what I always like to say.
So the third point of contact is gonna be
that nice nasty little,
- Where you got a callous right here.
- That nice nasty little callous, exactly.
Place that underneath the trigger guard
just like so, and the more important part now
is to make sure you roll those thumbs
toward the down-range area.
And what that's gonna do, by rolling those thumbs
toward the down-range area, it's gonna physically force
my support hand, my wrist, at a downwards
of 45 degree angle downward.
Now as the guns trying to lift up and back and recoil
that traction on the gun we talked about,
whether is be the 1911 grips or the stippling or grip tape,
whatever you might wanna use at home for your pistols,
is gonna bite against that support palm.
And as the guns trying to lift up and back
I already have that torque or that downward pressure
with that traction and it's not gonna allow the pistol
to lift quite as high as it wants to.
- Very cool, well you got nine, .38 Super, .45.
Doesn't matter what you're shooting, ya know,
use all you can for the rules but you still have to be able
to shoot the gun and manage the recoil.
- Exactly, it's all up to you.
It starts from the feet all the way up to the hands.
And it's just a large recoil management process.
But it all has to work in unison with one another.
- Thanks a bunch Max.
- You bet Tom, thanks for having me.
- Alright.
(gun fires)
- When you talk about recoil there's two different factors.
One, there's the movement of the gun rear-ward
and there's the muzzle flip.
And a lot of the time we're worried about the wrong thing.
Muzzle flip is what limits our ability to shoot quickly.
The energy being put into your body and moving you rear-ward
almost always creates a problem of muzzle flip.
Because if you could keep the gun on line and move back
and never have the gun move up and down,
you wouldn't care that you moved back and forth.
So worry more about muzzle flip.
The strength in your wrist is way more important
than the strength in the rest of your arms.